Dadanox wins. I have been assimilated.Follow

I've always been a fan of people finding what works best for them. The main thing is that you have the information you need, that you can act on it quickly, and that you can customize what you want an alert on.

Several solutions can attain those goals. I use Vuhdo for pretty much all my unit frame functions. I just have the standard Blizzard frame for myself and target up top, for opening up a trade, etc. I don't look up there otherwise.

Some key addons I use to suppliment Vuhdo for watching the state of things:
Raven - Replacement for Blizz buff and debuff frames.
Castbars - Showing self, target, focus
Power Auras, Satrina Buff Frames, and DBM.

If I was going to use something else, I'd fall back into the Grid camp.

Maybe you want more, but you did find the check box for Panels, Target and Target of Target, right? Yes, if you want more detailed info of those items, you may want to make a Raven group for target and target of target. I'm generally only interested in the detailed info within vuhdo for party members. Targets I'm just smiting, and additional details come through Raven frames, etc.

If I really wanted detailed unit frames on target of target, I'd probably add another unitframe as well.

Edited, Feb 28th 2011 9:21pm by dadanox

Okay, so, I did stop trying to make healing mods do things they're not meant to do, and put some unit frames back in for things like myself, target, and ToT.

Then I spent a few hours each with VuhDo, Grid, and Healbot.

Then I went back to Pitbull+mouseovers.

Not a total waste of time, it's good to keep an open mind and try everything once in a while. Healing mods have some great upsides to them, but in the end, click casting is just too awkward and unnatural for me.

I did change my mouseover macros though, so now all my defensive ones look like this:

/cast [nomodifier, @mouseover] Renew; [mod:shift, @player] Renew; [mod:ctrl, @Mrteacake] Renew;

No more target or ToT in my macros means no more inaccuracy in casting. I can cast on myself or my partner without ever interfering with mouse turning in any way, and use my mouseovers on raid/party frames. I also redid a bunch of other layout and binding type things, so like any new UI I did get tripped up a bit practicing it last night (we went 6-2 and I was vigorously and accurately blamed for at least 1 of the 2), but overall it rocks the most.

Nonsense. We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own.

Pitbull ftw, pitbull+clique if you want to click heal.

You can white/black list buffs, configure where they're displayed and everything.
I'm not entirely sure if you can make the entire unitframe glow with the colour of a debuff but I'm guessing it's possible and I simply haven't found the way to do it yet.

The only thing I don't think it can do it Grid's squares in the corners but maybe there's an additional module for that that you can download. (And if not, maybe you can find someone who can write lua and create a module )
There it is
And a module that flashes the healthbar once it drops below a certain %, one to display additional icons that display race/class and something to show you the remaining lifetime of your summoned pet.

Edited, Mar 6th 2011 11:45am by Aethien

OMG AETHIEN I LOVE YOU! I mean, even more than usual. I had no idea that PB Visual Helpers mod existed. That is going to be so fun.

Dadanox, you can do all that stuff, although I don't find the options for it as obvious as they are in a healing mod. Pitbull is the most customizable mod I've ever found, but the downside is that there's a lot of configuration and I find it takes a lot of tinkering to get it how I want. My frames highlight (not the whole frame, just a glow around the edge) red for disease, blue for dispellable magic, and purple for PW:S which fades to a lighter purple for Weakened Soul. They show me PoM and Renew as icons inside the frame. I don't have special boss debuffs to worry about and I do most of my buff/debuff stuff with Raven, so I like to keep the visual indicators on my regular frames few and simple.

The little squares like Grid will be awesomer though. It's annoying to have to grow icons big enough to see them. With this I'd have room for more inside my frames, which I like to keep small.

Edit: I also used to use this one: Pitbull Aura Bar. You can use it to add extra bars in the frame for various buffs/debuffs. I used that for PoM and Renew instead of icons for a while.

Edited, Mar 6th 2011 9:22am by teacake

Check the video that I'm going to be uploading sometime today in the PvP forums for how I've set up Pitbull.

I can see where Pitbull and Clique (or keybindings) could make a nice healing raidframe. For me right now, I've got Vuhdo exactly the way I want it. I'm going to keep that, rather than try to turn Pitbull into a Vuhdo lookalike.

I'm astonished when I hear another healer say they can't see a particular debuff, people's pets, targets, or who has aggro. There are several good choices out there if you take the time to configure them.

I can see that in a raid. In a 5 man, I like to see both. When smite healing, I may choose to smite the lowest health target to help finish them off, rather than sticking to the tank's target. Pets are my call and certainly not a priority. I like to have the information though.

I'm a bit frustrated and I think I'm gonna go back to my roots.

Grid, and a few extra grid modules for my raid frames.
Pitbull4 for target, focus, etc.
Clique for casting.
Decursive, just to try something new.

I'm thinking back to an earlier time, 2 yrs ago, when I wrote an old grid configuration post. The gui configuration for grid looks good. It also allows for buff, debuff priority which is nice.

I have tried to use Pitbull for everything, but right now I'm not up to the task. Perhaps this compromise will get me closer to what I want. Change can be good.

Edit: I'm pretty happy going back to Grid. Debuff Priority is one thing missing from Vuhdo custom spells. I currently have my Pitbull4 target, etc just above my grid, but clicking stuff causes the target frame to change so things jump back and forth a bit. I think instead I'll make the tank my focus and move the focus frame and focus target above my grid, for easy smiting of the tank's target, without the flipflop that happens while healing and changing targets.


Further observations...
I removed decursive. It's redundant for me. The whole reason I started looking at grid alternatives a couple years ago was the quest for a simpler, fairly pre-configured environment. As with most things, simpler out of the box may mean less flexible down the road.

I like the current Grid options panels. It's really pretty easy (especially compared to the maze of options which is vuhdo). Priority on indicators means I can decide on a hierarchy of colors on each indicator. My border for instance shows dispellable debuffs rather than the my target border indicator if they exist. I can make things work exactly the way I want (a center icon and health bar turns red for a raid debuff, for example). I use side and corner icons for things like shields and renew. Countdowns and stacks show.

I'm having fun again. Funny how for a healer, getting what you want out of your raid frames, has a lot to do with your enjoyment.

Edited, Mar 24th 2011 5:36pm by dadanox