AddOn Spotlight: Grid
by Eliah Hecht 
Jan 1st 2007 at 2:09AM
I used to raid heal using mainly the CT_RaidAssist emergency monitor. Call me a bad healer if you want; it was a lot nicer than having 40 health bars all over my screen. The emergency monitor is not clickable in WoW 2, and thus began my hunt for a way that I could see everybody's health and still see the fight. CT_RA bars, Blizzard's bars, and the like were all out due to being simply too big. Furthermore, I find them a bit overwhelming, making it hard to spot who's low on health. I mostly heal main tanks, but I like to be able to easily see if a Rogue or something takes a big hit. So where does one turn for a set of raid health bars that's small, legible, and informative?I humbly present my current solution: Grid, by Pastamancer (KoL FTW!). As the name suggests, it lays out in a grid everyone in your raid. It's incredibly configurable, but I've stuck pretty close to the default (I did make it bigger; it starts out very tiny indeed). The entire background of the box is the character's health bar, colored according to class, and in the foreground it shows the first 4 (by default) letters of the character's name. When someone dips below a preset health threshold, it shows the health deficit -- for instance, the bottom-left warrior in the screenshot is 1.6k health down. This makes picking an appropriate heal a snap. Debuffs are also shown by icons, and the corners of a character's square can be set to display various things (I have it set to show debuffs I can't cure, as well as HoTs). Finally, and this is unbelievably helpful, if a character is low on health, their square is highlighted (as is your target's square) with a white border.
I realize this may sound a little complicated, so I photoshopped up a diagram:
Anyway, as I said, it's very, very configurable, but that is more or less the default, if I recall correctly, and it works very well for me. I'm currently combining it with the X-Perl main tank frames and the CT_RA emergency monitor for a fairly comprehensive raid-people-monitoring solution. I do still use the CT_RA frames for buffing though.
Oh, one last thing -- someone called Shadmar has written a plugin for Grid called GridStatusHots that shows the status of your own HoTs on the Grid. Helpful, since I believe Grid otherwise doesn't distinguish between your HoTs and other people's, and HoT stacking on tanks is sexy.
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P.S. Happy new year, people who live east of PST!
Filed under: Add-Ons, Features, Raiding, AddOn Spotlight
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
wilgrin Feb 11th 2008 6:14PM
So, so true.
Ever since I found out how to dim the grid for people who are out of range I have been on top of the healing chart in any BG. Just keep renew on everyone in range with a single click.
Matthew Jul 20th 2010 4:25PM
I just figured out how to make it work. For those not in the know: the box is the health meter, and runs top to bottom.
I changed it to a horizontal format, which is what I'm use to. Now my grid is long bars.
Great for my priest! Haven't used it on a druid yet.
Seper Jan 1st 2007 12:29PM
Is there an addon that will alert me to when my group members are low on health? I dont want a bar... i want like a txt window pop up. Its for a druid too.
This looks awesome for when i'm forced into healing in raids ( i hope i'm a tank)
thx!
Uncle Vinny Jan 1st 2007 5:11AM
That's a damned fine New Year's present, Eliah!
It might be a long time before I'm healing a raid again, but I will definitely want to check this out.
Laetitia Jan 1st 2007 7:34AM
It took me ages to figure grid out when i first got it (so many options!) but i now swear by it. Definitely the way of the future for us fellow heal/decurse-bots.
I found the most useful feature, at least as far as PvP healing is concerned is that you can make it so each player's grid is brighter or darker if they're in range or not.
I don't know how many other people walk into BGs with the intention of healing, but it's perhaps the most frustrating job i ever have to do since it's so hard to keep track of who exactly is around you and how much HP they're on.
The Blizzard floating health bars are almost no help at all since targetting people with is practially impossible when there's 10 bars floating all over your screen. And having to then look at the raid UI to find out who needs a dispel or whatever. It's a goddamn nightmare.
But grid makes it infinitely more easy since only those in range will be lit up, and so much information is stored on that tiny little interface. Excellent mod, by far best i've seen (and no doubt the best there is) since the recent UI changes were put in place.
Christian Stricker Jan 1st 2007 8:59AM
I've been using it since 2.0 was released, but I long for my precious PerfectRaid. Alas.. the author will not release his 2.0 version before TBC is out, so he can test something with it.
Grid.. *sigh* ..it's good, but what it lacks is update. It NEVER shows the actual amount of health the target has left, say, a 1 second delay usually. It's awful, so I've gone to using ag_unitframes for raiding now.
Nightshifter Jan 1st 2007 10:31AM
As a druid, this is a godsend, I was using the ct emergency monitor as well to heal pre 2.0, now I swear by this. I have it set so there are two rows of text, one for the name and one for if there is a rejuv/regrowth on the target. And the Icons for curses/poisons. I love how it makes the icon fade out if the person is out of range. I don't have it set to show how much health they're missing as my forte as it were is overhealing (sigh). 3s heals suck :(. Plus I would rather know the name of the warrior I'm healing so I know that I'm not healing a dps warrior over the MT or OT. I wish we could have more than one focus.
Gist Jan 1st 2007 11:31AM
Personally, I don't use any add ons to heal or decurse. I use CT_Raid just so I can see all 40 members of the raid, but only since it's easier than dragging every group out from the Blizzard UI.
I play on more than one machine, and it was too much of a pain to make sure all my add ons were synced the way I needed, and not to mention the hell of patch day... not using any add ons makes raiding a whole lot simpler, though certainly not easier. There are plenty of add ons that should be part of the default UI. Decursive of course being a big one. I may not have used it in raids, but the folks that did got a whole lot more work done than I did.
Argent Jan 1st 2007 11:34AM
i love grid. if you combine it with clique or a dispell/decurse macro bound to your mousewheel, you'll honestly never even miss decursive.
i've not had any issues with it updating in a timely fashion unless i was lagging substantially myself, btw. in 25 man raids, grid is wonderfully compact to boot.
as for buffing -- i'm lucky that i can use a mod like pallypower (http://wow.curse-gaming.com/en/files/details/3738/pallypower/).
Meli Jan 2nd 2007 11:14AM
I love grid! Another thing that I find really cool is, as long as the other healers are using grid it shows who is currently getting a heal, and the little red square in the corner means that person has agro. So if a rogue or someone grabs agro I notice the little red square. Very nice addon, I dont really miss emergency monitor anymore.
Teut Weidemann Jan 1st 2007 4:35PM
There is a mod which does most of the stuff you ask about: healbot. It does display a rather nice configurable grid or health bars and shows all sorts of stuff as well like hots, which healer heals your targets as well and much more.
It has pre sets as well like Raids, or Alterac, where heal configurations need to be different (range dependend)
Luke Jan 1st 2007 7:28PM
This mod is awesome for mages, i went from just spaming decurse to getting this thing, and while it might not be near as easy it does work better than anything else i have tried since 2.0.1. It takes a bit to get used to and some messing around with but it works awesome.
Nightshifter Jan 1st 2007 7:09PM
Argent -
Exactly, I thought that decursing/depoisoning was going to make raiding so much harder without decursive, but with my macro, which casts the necessary spell on whichever target that my mouse is hovered over, it is really easy to decurse whoever is in range with grid. I dont miss decursive at all anymore.
Pastamancer Jan 2nd 2007 12:56AM
Here's a neat tip for healers in WSG:
If you go to the Auras status module you can add the buff that the flag carrier recieves ("Silverwing Flag" for horde and "Warsong Flag" for alliance). Then you can customize the color for the buff's status and assign it to any of the indicators. Personally, I set it to be a bright red border so I can easily find the flag carrier and keep them alive.
Becca Jan 2nd 2007 10:59AM
When I was updating all my addons after the 2.0 patch, I saw that thing on WoWInterface, but I never really knew what it did. My guild's getting ready to start seriously raiding, and this sounds like it would be perfect for my little healadin.
Arangat Jan 3rd 2007 8:39AM
I consider the broken down versions of all addons at 2.0 to be a blessing as they made me look for new solutions and discover Grid. I swear by it.
P.S.: being a priest I find it very helpfull to use the missing buff module to display the missing buffs in the bottom left corner. Check out: http://www.wowace.com/wiki/Grid/Other_Modules
Jusstice Jan 9th 2007 1:38PM
Hey all,
This is an excellent add-on and I would recommend this to anyone who needs to heal/cleanse/decurse/dispell. It's extremely easy to customize and use on raids(or what I use it most for, PvP). Thanks for creating this and my hats off for ya. Keep up the good work please!
Jusstice
Lvl 60 Dwarf Priest of Thunderlord.