Here's a question:
What is the big difference between Healbot and Grid?
I've read Keeva's Grid vs Healbot guide and was like, 'm'kay'.
Tried Grid for about 30minutes, trying to set it up and gave up. I'm a huge addon noob.
I heal just fine with Healbot, and I love the simplicity of it. No, not the way it makes the game easier. It doesn't, not at all. I'm still the one making the decisions in a split second: should I Nourish or let the LB tick? It's my decisions that will -literally- save the tank/raid.
Apperantly there was some beef where Healbot used to pick the spell ranks for you. If that was still the case, then I wouldn't use it. But it isn't the case!
So why all the hate versus Healbot?
Just look at some of these comments I've seen around the web while watching Ulduar guides:
"lol healbot = fail healer"
"Learn to play without using easy-mode add-ons. You got your gear from being carried. You got your "skill" from an add-on that does the work for you. Get skill kthanksbai"
"Yes, because when I play a GAME!!!! I want it to be as easy as possible...not! I heal everything with no healbot because I want the added difficulty. Otherwise I might as well play some other easy game like Final Fantasy or something. And it may not translate into skill, it does however translate into quicker reflexes. Grats for taking free handouts."
Obviously, my reactions to some of these comments are =O
When I first signed up for Lords and told them that Littlebark would be a healer, they told me that the add on they use to heal is Healbot. M'kay, easy enough.
But now I pose the question to all you druids out there: What is the real difference? Am I missing out on something? Is all really customization? Or will Grid better me as a healer?
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I play almost all of the healing classes except a druid (he's getting there ... 8 more levels) in a high-end raid setting.
ReplyDeleteGrid is all around better.
1) It's more customizable.
2) You can program it to show you EXACTLY what you need to know.
My priest is my main.
On it, I track my renews as they count down, where my pom is, raid-wide bubbles and weakened soul debuffs immediately. I also can customize it to show EXACTLY the information I want raidwide.
I have it set to show the number of hots on a target, who has a grace stack, who has earthshield, who has beacon of light, magic and disease debuffs, and lastly key raid debuffs.
I could have it show more. I could show other people's renews. I could show every single druid hot, riptide, etc. etc. But I chose not too.
That is the informational side of things. Whats important here is that I MAKE it show the information I want so that I can not only heal well but complement other healers (as in not bothering to heal people with a rejuvenation already on them in a non-dangerous situation.
On the execution side of things, it is simply lazy to just click on healbot and have it heal the way you want. No top raid healer uses healbot for a reason. There is a lot more functionality from setting up your own mouseover macros and having it interact with grid or ctraid or pb or whatever.
You can set up a macro to not only does what healbot does on a click, but to heal your target if you click on an area outside of youur raid frames, and if you have no target heal yourself.
It's much more versatile.
Hence, healbotters are n00bs to hardcore healers.
Whether this is just or not is subjective. I've provided the reasons why.
I've healed with both and think they're both fine. I just like grid better on my druid because it displays the hots in a nice easy to read fashion that is much more compact than healbot.
ReplyDelete@ Anom:I must be a noob to alot of people then, because I use healbot. Funny thing is, our of our top healers in the guild uses healbot as well and he always beat them "Hard Core Raiders".
ReplyDeleteBut thank you very much for your opinion. :)
@ Katinka: I'll have to give Grid another shot then. I'm certainly pleased with the Healbot addon, that's for sure. But who knows, maybe Grid is the next best thing.
As you mentioned, back in vanilla, Healbot would choose the rank of spell for you. So you would basically just click someone's frame, and it would choose which spell to use (and the appropriate rank according to how much health they were missing).
ReplyDeleteWhich meant that if you had Healbot, all you had to do was this:
1. Notice someone missing health
2. Click on their frame.
No decision-making (other than "I click on that person"). It made users into lazy and/or incompetent healers, because all they had to do was click someone and the mod would choose the heal for them.
Plus, if the mod broke (which I believe it did, a lot), suddenly these people would have to do everything themselves - and the ones who had come to rely heavily on Healbot really struggled.
These days, Healbot has come a long way - it's a lot closer to Grid than ever.
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The reason I don't use it, though: the HoT timers are nowhere near as good or as customisable as in Grid. They are very hard to read (by comparison), they lay down in order of cast (which just complicates trying to interpret which HoT is on your target), and you can't really customise them.
With Grid, you can use icons, coloured dots, or texts (or a combination), according to what suits you best, and what you can interpret fastest.
I found Healbot's HoT timers to be clumsy and a lot harder to read at a glance. Grid's timers are superior, and make for faster reaction time. HoTs are probably the most important thing I need to see (after deficits), so I can't use a mod with sub-par timers.
If Healbot made better HoT timers, I could probably use it quite happily.
Story of my life... Started using Healbot about 7 months ago and it was good. Tried Grid, but when I saw what I need to do and install to see various info about my HoTs on the target... Bai bai, Grid!
ReplyDeleteSome time ago I started using VuhDo instead of HB. It's nice, colorful, and gives you the best features of Healbot and Grid combined into one sexy package. Yet, I still had HB as my backup and switched back to it from time to time.
And then came that faithful Naxx 25-man run and our last fight with Kel. What's this? An icon? With a number? But VuhDo doesn't have icons! Omigod! It's a Frost Blast indicator! I can SEE (not just read, thank you very much DBM) who got Frost Blasted and how much time I have left to heal them! Marry me, VuhDo! As for you, Healbot... take a hike, you ugliest weenie!
PS. Also works on Ignis' Slag Pot and similar important raid debuffs.
I choose the third option - Vuhdo. IMHO has the best features of grid and healbot, with a very easy interface, so it takes very little time to get up and running.
ReplyDeletethe only thing I don't like is losing the icons that HB uses for HoT's - VuhDo just puts a colored square down... apart from that, I think its the best option...
I play a raiding Resto Druid, and I have not used healbot, so my opinion is a little biased, but I love grid.
ReplyDeleteIt shows you what you need to know in a simple layout.
I also use Clique, so a certain mouse click (ie shift + right click is abolish poison) on a grid frame delivers the heal, buff etc.
Grid + Clique + 4 button mouse is a winning combination.
I still have to think about my spells, and I need to monitor who has what on them, but my set up takes a lot of the pressure off.
Healbot sounds a little removed to me. I don't think healing should be hard, but I don't think it should be automatically done for me either.
I think Vuhdo is the clear winner for me in this Grid-HB discussion. You can clearly use Vuhdo out-of-box. Custumization is not required at all. But that also doesnt mean that it lacks it. You can do whatever you can do with Grid+HB with Vuhdo easily. The author of the addon (Iza- i salute you) is very active, listens to the comments and complaits on the forum (healplus), curse and makes very clever additions to the addon.
ReplyDeleteFor example at the early phases of the addon the start-up configuration was very cumbersome and almost as hard as grid. Someone on the forum commented that one of the reasons for success of the X-Perl unit frames was the out-of-box user friendly look of the addon. Iza made very good changes to the addon and it has the most userfriendly interface right now and it doesnt need any configuration. When a patch comes out and messes up with addons, i can usually configure the new version in couple of minutes exactly to my liking.
Another example is the private tanks option. Someone suggested it in the forum. And i can say that im in love with this option as a healer. With this option you can select YOUR Mt's(or in my case tanks+my fellow healers=) ) to be shown in a window(Like CTRaid MT window). No more asking to raid leader to assign MT's!
I don't need to mention the integrated clique usage of the addon, i can change the configuraiton on the fly. My left mouse button is rejuv for one fight and regrowth for the next one. So easy.
This small things and the evergoing interest of the author makes this addon the best out there.
If you havent tried it you might think that im exaggerating, but really, give it a try and see it with your own eyes, its really that good.
Giefan - Icecrown
ReplyDeleteI use Grid and mouseover macros. I was unsatisfied with Clique when it didn't give me enough buttons to play with. I'm a dope in regards to macros but this one works wonders.
#showtooltip Regrowth
/cast [target=mouseover,exists,help,nodead] Regrowth
I use that for most of my spells. It's amzing when combined with Grid.