As Tuesday’s respec left me rather flustered, I logged into Khaeli last night a bit earlier than usual so that I’d give myself plenty of time to review my new spec before our raid. As I mentioned yesterday, I’ve used Power Auras for quite some time in order to track buffs (I initially downloaded it to indicate when the ol’ 10-minute Inner Fire had expired, but have since set it up to track the haste from Borrowed Time and the Egg of Mortal Essence). I added the Surge of Light, Clearcasting and Improved Holy Concentration procs to Power Auras, and tried to give it some sort of color code that made sense and made learning these new abilities a bit easier: a green circle around Khaeli meant a haste buff, a blue one meant a mana reduction. (Here’s a great guide to the add-on, for those interested). I tested it by spamming heals on myself, but it just seemed to be a blur of color and rings, all indicating “zomg! proc!” to which my response was still, after 24-hours of being Holy, “Wait, wut?”
So I tried a different add-on: TellMeWhen. While it has ostensibly the same function as Power Auras — it provides a visual display to monitor buffs/debuffs/cooldowns/procs — it uses the game’s icons rather than some other (albeit pretty) pattern. I set up one bar right above my Quartz casting bar to watch for my new Holy procs, as well as the haste from the Egg trinket and Heroism. I also created a bar to the left of Grid (where my eyes are most of a fight) to monitor the cooldowns for Circle of Healing and Prayer of Mending, as I’m still trying to get the feel for what buttons to push and when.
Did it help during our Naxx run? Blah, I dunno. I have gone from feeling incredibly knowledgeable and well-geared as a Disc Priest to feeling like a button-mashing, mana-starved padawan noob.
Thanks to AT&T for (for the time being) fixing your damn servers so that I can raid Heigan without lagging into the green wall of doom.
TellMeWhen is really a great mod, I also used it when I was holy to track the procs, and with great effect. It’s simple, effective, and after a little time you build an association of “Surge icon there = instant flash heal ready,” almost to your muscle memory. It’s very nice.
But I didn’t realize it tracked cooldowns too. I think I will try to use it to show me when Penance and PW:S are on cooldown… ironically I am newer to the Disc spec, as you are newer to Holy!
TellMeWhen sounds very promising, thanks for the link. I wonder if I can set it up to show shadow weaving stacks?
Gratz on the achievements!
good job on an enlightening post!
Would you mind sharing which addon/UI changes your menus / achievements to that style (ie. the black)? Thank you very much.
[...] or Heroism or Surge of Light. However, TellMeWhen does not have the option of setting profiles. I wrote about this add-on — briefly — when I first was asked to switch specs to Holy, and some commenters asked for more details on setting it up. As I’ve had to fiddle with it [...]