Patch 5.4 patch notes
Virtual Realms feature revealed
The Proving Grounds are coming
The latest patch 5.4 newsAddon Spotlight: Vuhdo
by Matt Low 
Jan 30th 2010 at 4:00PM
We've received many tips about Vuhdo and it was only a matter of time before it would be featured here. Vuhdo is one of the most popular raid healing addons available. It offers enough features and customization options to keep even the pickiest of UI enthusiasts happy. At the same time, if your entire UI is fried and the raid is about to start, Vuhdo works great out of the box.
What's so great about it? I thought you'd never ask. Let me show you.
Like most healing frames, Vuhdo will show all information that's relevant to you.
- Health remaining
- Mana or energy remaining (Rage, runic power, etc)
- Dispellable debuffs (or non-dispellable ones)
- Rangefinder (If they're out of range, the player becomes transparent)
- Players who have pulled threat
- HoT effects
- Tags (AFK, disconnected, dead, etc.)
Debuff management
One very important feature that healers need is the ability to enter and detect customized debuffs. As you can see above, I entered debuffs that normally wouldn't appear as dispellable abilities for a priest. Having Rune of Blood show up alerts me to which players will be taking more damage than others. Inoculated allows me to see who managed to get the buff and who missed out on it (and thus, giving them a defensive cool down of sorts allowing them to live).
Here's what it looks like on the raid frames. It'll even show things like Weakened Soul so I don't end up wasting my time dropping a shield on someone who can't receive it. The number on the icon shows how many seconds left before it expires. It only shows up when the debuffs are close to wearing off.
Here's what it looks like on the raid frames. It'll even show things like Weakened Soul so I don't end up wasting my time dropping a shield on someone who can't receive it. The number on the icon shows how many seconds left before it expires. It only shows up when the debuffs are close to wearing off.
Key bindings
Click the spell tab on the bottom and this screen will be the first thing you see. This is just one example of how I would set my keys. This is the Mouse screen where you can assign spells, macros items, or commands. Its very easy to set up. Look up the specific key combination you want to use, and then select it and type in the name of what you want it to do. As you can see, in this example, there is no modifier key set. Target is the left mouse button and Prayer of Mending is the right mouse button. If I wanted to cast Flash Heal by using Ctrl + left mouse, I'd just change the panel to Ctrl on the left pane and type in Flash Heal in the same spot.
Easy right?
In the event you're out in the world and you need to blow up some stuff, there is a hostile tab on the right. You can toss in your damage spells instead of healing ones in the same areas. If your target is friendly, it will use the spells and commands that correspond with the healing binds. If your target is hostile, it'll detect and switch over to your hostile configuration as needed.
For those who feel more at ease with a keyboard, the process takes a touch longer. Easy right?
In the event you're out in the world and you need to blow up some stuff, there is a hostile tab on the right. You can toss in your damage spells instead of healing ones in the same areas. If your target is friendly, it will use the spells and commands that correspond with the healing binds. If your target is hostile, it'll detect and switch over to your hostile configuration as needed.
In the first window, type in the different names of the spells you want to use. You can enter in 16 of them. Once you're finished there, you'll need to load up the in game keyboard controls. Scroll all the way down to the bottom and you can then map in your keys individually. Remember, macros and commands work as well.
Voila! Was that so difficult? Now your keyboard abilities have been mapped. Granted, its not as elegant as other bar or binding mods, but it does do the job. It even shows you what spell is in each slot.
Healing over time spells
Vuhdo has an incredibly diverse way of setting up your displays. Grid users may recognize that Vuhdo also uses a small icon display to show various HoTs. Again, you can customize it as you see fit. Healers will have their HoTs preset. I've got Renew, Protection of Ancient Kings, and so forth listed below. I can tell which player has which effect based on where the icon appears on the player's frame. If I see a square on the far left side at some point, then I know they already have a Renew on them and can move on to the next player. A square on the far right of the frame tells me that I've already cast Pain Suppression on the player (and when it wears off).
Bar configuration
You can configure display options like text, health and position below. Vuhdo is extremely flexible when it comes to displays. As a healer though, you need to figure out what you really need. I've configured my frames so that the health bars of the player match their class (for example, the health bar of a mage is blue while a priest would be white). This way, I don't need a text indicator that shows me what their class is. Health percentage is nice to know but I need to know absolute health numbers. 10% health for a warrior tank is different than 10% health for a squishy warlock. I need those hard numbers so I can make a snap decision.
So how does it all look in the end? I took a few shots of myself in action during an Utgarde Keep run, but here's one that shows what it can do. I've cast Renew on the warrior and the rogue. The green bar on them visually shows how much time is left. Its hard to see, but there is also a blue bar above the rogue. You'll notice he has the Weakened Soul debuff. The blue bar indicates how much time is left before it wears off. After hitting the warrior with Prayer of Mending, I can see that its bounced on to the warlock and its going to wear off in 4 seconds. Its safe to say hes probably not going to get hit again so I can refresh it on the warrior.
I don't have rage, runic power, or energy bars displaying. As a healer, its not really necessary nor is it relevant to what I need.
Those customized debuffs I mentioned at the beginning of the post? They'll usually show up where the Weakened Soul debuff is here. If there are different debuffs, they'll show up side by side.
If you want, you can have it display specific group configurations like:
- Tanks only
- Healers
- Ranged or melee DPS
- Pets
- Vehicles
- Group number
Resources
Curse.comWoW Interface
Plus Heal Vuhdo forums (Note: Iza is incredibly active in the community and if you have any questions or suggestions, feel free to post them there as well)
If you're a new healer who is looking for a healing addon to use, I strongly urge that you give Vuhdo a try. There are other setups and addons of course, and I'll be writing a post comparing them all at some point in the future.
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Add-Ons, Raiding, AddOn Spotlight
Reader Comments (Page 4 of 6)
archer75 Jan 30th 2010 5:56PM
I use Grid and am happy with it. I don't keybind buttons in the program. I have bartender setup and everything keybound. Bars are setup to mimic my N52. I then use grid just to select players and present me with info. I find this combo is quite a bit faster for me.
PocketFox Jan 30th 2010 5:56PM
Thank you so much for recommending this! My disc priest is getting high enough in level that I was starting to think of an addon to help out his healing, and this looks like a good one. (I also thought about Grid, but I've heard too many horror stories about it from friends. Srsly, an addon that requires a YouTube tutorial to show you how to set it up?)
Wyred Feb 1st 2010 5:58AM
Reconsider. Grid works pretty much out of the box, you'll only need to configure it to get the most out of it. A youtube tutorial? Only if you're a complete technophobe, personally I didn't even know something like that existed.
archer75 Jan 30th 2010 6:04PM
A question, since I use Grid and I have it show me in the upper left if a person has a disease and the upper right if they have a magic debuff, the whole frame shows me who has aggro, it also shows me who has the weakened soul debuff, basically everything I need to know, can vuhdo do the same? All in an easy to see manner so that you can respond quickly?
Last I tried vuhdo I couldn't click to select a player and that was a deal breaker for me. It would always just click through. Has the option been added to use it as a tool to select players.
BTW, i'm using Grid2. Way more easy to configure than Grid.
OIK2 Jan 30th 2010 9:16PM
yes to all of these things. I have found the look of Vuhdo easier for responding to things than Grid in fact. While Grid tends to focus on the colored blocks rather than the icons(I know you can get icon addons, but not all status addons support icon indicators), Vuhdo focus more on the icons from the start, along with borders and block colors, and theses icons zoom when they are created(I think there is an option to turn this on and off) so they are quite eyecatching.
For selecting a target on click you can either have the click you want to use set to target(just put"target" in the action box), or you can set it so that it automatically targets on spell cast(does not work with macros, only actions and spells, though you could add /tar [@mouseover] to your mouseover macros).
Michael Jan 30th 2010 6:17PM
I dropped Grid/Clique months ago for Vuhdo and haven't looked back. Fantastic addon for any healing class.
Emoroan Jan 30th 2010 6:29PM
Why do addon authors insist on making their own UI for config? 99% of the time they look uglier then the default blizzard frames.
OIK2 Jan 30th 2010 9:28PM
There are a few parts of Vuhdo's config I can see it being useful, primarily in the radio buttons that let u choose what part of the frame things appear in, but otherwise I agree. A simple tree view navigation would be better than the 2 sets of tabs(one set for main areas, and another for sub areas...also odd that they are along the bottom and right sides as opposed to the top and left as most people are used to) that Vuhdo uses to navigate around it's options, this is the only program that I have ever seen this style of navigating options.
Wonder if this has any impact on module performance?
Sylverrose Mar 17th 2010 6:24PM
Actually they probably modeled their config to look like HealBot which also has tabs on the bottom and some interesting sub menus inside to navigate. I mostly enjoy healbot, but find it slightly annoying in how it configures and some of the new updates which will "autofill" the spell but doesn't have all of my class skills available. I find the hostile option interesting and may try it out as this is something I run into as a problem from time to time when I forget to switch out of my healing spec to go do some daily quests.
Kiliani Jan 30th 2010 6:58PM
I use Grid/Clique still, never had a reason to switch and I like how I have mine configured... Count me among those who would like to see a full comparison between the major healer raid frame addons (Grid+Clique, Healbot, and Vuhdo, primarily), because I've not yet found something that I'd like Grid/Clique to do that I can't make it do acceptably well.
"I don't have rage, runic power, or energy bars displaying. As a healer, its not really necessary nor is it relevant to what I need."
Your prerogative, obviously... Since I find having mana bars showing as useful, I go ahead and show rage/energy, etc as well. Energy and runic power aren't a concern to me, but I find there are times when it does help to know when a warrior or druid tank is rage-starved, as it puts me on heightened alert to watch for DPS pulling off of him.
Tim Jan 30th 2010 7:05PM
I have tried Healbot, Grid, and Vuhdo each separately, and Vuhdo comes in as my 2nd choice. Healbot was my first healing addon way back in the day, and it's current incarnation still has me hooked.
I tried Vuhdo at the start of 3.2, used it for several raids and liked it, but I truly despise the ugly options panes, and that the config menus are set to the uiscale (which makes the options impossible to read and configure at the level I prefer uiscale set to). The addon worked fine and did just about everything I wanted on my pally and priest, but trying to customized it properly was a chore, and I could never get it quite right.
Healbot is still a long ways behind on proper hot tracking, so I will reinvestigate Vuhdo if I ever get around to leveling my druid to 80. IVuhdo is also usable out of the box, so if Healbot broke or was somehow unusable, I think Vuhdo would be next on the line.
Stephen Jan 30th 2010 7:22PM
I'm a creature of habit, and I have to say that when I tried to switch to Vuhdo from a Grid + Clique interface I just couldn't get used to it. Something about the visual interface of Vuhdo made me physically uncomfortable, to the point where I would get headaches after playing with it on for more than about 10 minutes. I have no clue why that is... Though that's neither here nor there.
My primary issue with Vuhdo was that I couldn't customize it EXACTLY like I wanted. I spent maybe about 2 weeks playing around with it, and never could make it feel as comfortable as Grid did. It's a great addon, don't get me wrong. If I hadn't used Grid I would have loved it. For me though, it's just not the right fit.
Lemons Jan 30th 2010 7:31PM
To me it seems like all these mods...Healbot...Vuhdo...and Grid...essentially do the same things. I currently use Healbot on my pally alt and until someone explains to me in plain English why Vuhdo or Grid is better I will continue to use it.
Prissa Jan 30th 2010 9:13PM
That's pretty much it. I see lots of people saying "I like my addon! Why should I change?" and essentially they don't have to. They all are designed to do the same thing, the important things, that healing in raids requires ie. debuffs, buffs, health, mana, procs etc.
I think the main difference (and I'm not saying there aren't small differences elsewhere, I don't know) is basically how they are set up. Personally I use Healbot and only sometimes it bothers me when my frames don't look like I want them to, but not enough that I could be bothered trying to set up something else. Vuhdo looks like it has some pre-set-up options for how your bars look, or where they are. I don't know how easy they would be to customise from there though. I honestly think it just depends on what you like and how far you're willing to go to customise stuff.
vocenoctum Jan 30th 2010 7:35PM
I just figured I'd add, since it was better for me in regards to raid-frames, that sRaidframes does what I wanted, it gives me a reading for everyone, in case I need to battle rez as a boomkin, or when I'm at the summoning stone, whatever.
If you're not looking for a click-cast setup, sraidframes is great.
Vaeku Jan 30th 2010 7:47PM
I just started to heal (got a new priest that I want to level through dungeons exclusively), and I'm using Healbot right now. But I think you've convinced me to give VuhDo a try. Since I use the Smite spec, having the friendly/hostile target thing sounds great for leveling and healing or whatever.
L Jan 30th 2010 8:51PM
I like Healbot personally, but I've heard a lot of people like Vuhdo, I think it has to do with what people are used to and comfortable with.
Orlan Jan 30th 2010 9:46PM
There are mainly 2 things that stop me from switching to using Vuhdo:
1. Vuhdo can only check if units are in range of a single spell. I need more gradual range indication. Like 10m (interact distance), 30m (interact distance), 40m (holy light) and 60m (beacon of light) since different spells have different ranges.
2. Vuhdo can only display health level using the whole unit frame background. It's hard to track such big bars. I'd like to have a thin bright health bar near the bottom of the unit frame.
Those features are implemented in Duugu's SWPHeal addon but that one is discontinued long ago.
Welldead Jan 30th 2010 9:56PM
Do you guys know of a good add-on for a Druid & a Mage? Just asking. I'm newb to getting add-ons and I don't even know UI means. So anyone knows a good one?
vanye111 Feb 2nd 2010 11:07AM
Honestly, I use VuhDo for all my characters (Mage (main), Pally (tank/heals, vuhdo configured for both specs), Druid (dps/heals; config's for both specs) and Hunter.
My mage has it set up for : left click: Remove Curse, Right Click Focus Magic, Center Click: Focus, button 4 Slow Fall, Button 5 Dampen Magic; shift left click target.
I don't remember my druid configs for dps, but I've got LC set for Rejuve, Right click Lifebloom, Center Click Regrowth, button 4 Abolish Poison, button 5 Remove Curse.
Pally tank is set for LC is Hand of Salvation, RC is Righteous Defense, Center is Cleanse, button 4 is Sacred Shield, Button 5 is Hand of Protection. Pally Heals is left click FoL, RC is Holy Light, Center is Cleanse, Button 4 is Sacred Shield, button 5 is Holy Shock.
Hunter is set for LC Mend Pet, RC Misdirect, and I don't remember what else. I have a few others configured, but not too many.