In Which We Discuss Addons

I know every player has their addon preferences, if any, and there's no real right or wrong setup. As long as it works for you, use it.

I, myself, have a pretty average setup. I'm still tweaking what I use from time to time, but for the most part it's pretty solid for what I need.

For raid frames, I use a combination of Grid and Xperl.

Grid takes your entire raid and puts it into what my guild leader refers to as "sanity in little boxes." The boxes are color-coded for each class, and display partial names of the players they represent. When a player loses health, the square boxes turn into rectangles. This becomes a game for myself and my guild leader (a holy paladin), where the goal is to turn those rectangles back into squares. This addon is also compatable with clique, which I will discuss later.

Grid also allows you to add in buffs and debuffs that will appear as different colors on the boxes. For example, I added in the debuff Weakened Soul as a light blue outline around the boxes. If a tank doesn't have weakened soul, I'm doing it wrong. It outlines who has aggro in red, which is helpful if you're in a two-tank fight, or if someone who shouldn't have aggro gets aggro. You can add in boss debuffs as well (such as Ignis the Furnace Master's Slag Pot), which helps to figure out who needs healing and when.

Xperl is just a rehash of the standard interface frames, but are, in my opinion, much cleaner. You can also choose where to display your buffs and debuffs (next to the minimap or under your heath bar). It's just a neat little override for the default interface.

For action bars, I use Bartender. Bartender turns all your action bars into movable bars, so you can arrange them how you feel most comfortable. I keep all mine in a box shape at the bottom of my window, so I don't have to go searching for the right spells. It's not the most versatile action bar modifier, but it's pretty nice if you don't want anything too complicated.

Decursive is almost a necessity for healers that use addons. Like Grid, it has little boxes representing each player (and pet) in the raid. When a player is cursed, poisoned, diseased, or has a magic effect, the box will change color and show the duration of the debuff. You can then click on it to dispel it without having to find the player, figure out what kind of spell it is, and then cast.

Clique is a good alternative to Healbot, which I have found to be bloated and unreliable. Clique lets you program in easy keybinds for different abilities. I currently have it set to my most commonly used ones. For instance, shift-left button activates my Power Word: Shield. Useful if you are bad with macros and keybinds, such as myself. (shhh)

Now, I know I am going to get shit for this next one, but it works pretty fabulously for me. Smartbuff. It was recommended to me by my mage friend while I was leveling my priest. You tell it what buffs you can cast that you want it to track, and it will tell you who in your party is missing said buff. You can then just scroll your mouse wheel and cast what's missing. This is pretty great if a few people die in a fight, so you don't have to hunt and peck for who's missing what, or waste another reagent (because we all know they're soooo expensive.)

A must-have for the distracted raider (like healers with tunnelvision) is Power Auras Classic. It gives visual cues (as auras around your character) for buffs, debuffs, etc. It's useful for any class (seals for paladins, aspects for hunters, standing in the stupid, procs, etc.), and works exceptionally well for people like me who usually doesn't have very good situational awareness because we're too damn busy chasing bars.

Three less important, but still nice to have addons are Atlasloot, Skada and Deadly Boss Mods.

Atlasloot, a loot database for all dungeons, raids, reputation rewards, etc., is a pretty sweet little tool to use to find out "hm, where do I need to go for my next upgrade?" I never leave Dalaran without it (especially now that I'm building a shadow set... SHH! Don't judge me!)

Skada is an alternative to Recount, and is much more lightweight and, in my opinion, accurate. It's a better tool for discipline priests than Recount also, because it gives estimated absorbs rather than flat numbers. Take THAT, resto shaman!

Another useful tool for the ADHD raider is Deadly Boss Mods. Mock me if you will, but it's incredibly helpful for people who, again, have tunnel vision. It will warn you with sounds and notices to move when you need to move, stop healing when you need to stop healing, and pretty much anything else you can ever need to know about boss encounters. Some call it a crutch. I call it Raid Ritalin.

I run a few additional addons, but they're mostly fun or vanity things.

I will be updating this with a link to my interface so you can see how these all tie together.

Downsizing

I always figured that we'd have members constantly coming and going, but I never thought that some of the people going would be people I had grown to be close to, or even just grow to have a good deal of respect for. That, for me, is saying a lot; I will be friendly, but I tend to keep most people at arm's length.

I will admit, the drama swimming around the guild has been building up a lot lately, but I attribute a lot of it to real-life stress. It seems like everyone has been bogged down irl, which carries over to the game and causes all sorts of problems. I've been taking a bit of time off of raiding because I didn't want my real-life problems to affect people who were just trying to enjoy the game. Unfortunately, not all the players in my guild have that luxury. It gets rough.

We lost both of our Shaman last night after ICC25, and our DPS DK. Our ret paladin left not long after. I don't have all the details, so I'll just end that part by saying that I'm shocked and a bit upset.

I liked the DK. He had been a friend of mine since before either of us discovered WoW. We would pal around on another game, and he would sometimes refer to me as his big sibling. One of the shaman I knew for about the same amount of time; we all hung around the same dream (sort of like a guild hall) on a text-based (with some pixelated graphics) mmo. I had only met the resto shaman relatively recently, but despite his brutal honesty and offputting demeanor, I liked him. The ret paladin had proven himself to be a good leader, and a polite guild member. I had a lot of respect for him.

However, I am trying not to get too depressed about this. I liked them all just fine, but others will come along. It's not like I cannot still be friends with them, but I will certainly miss raiding alongside them.

All we can do at this point is get up, brush ourselves off, and keep going. We can keep progressing, we just need to try. We're back to 10-mans, which is just fine by me. It means I will be lagging less, and my heals will be going off when I actually want them to. This is still a step back from what we were at, but we can still march on.

I love my guild. They're my family. I'm not giving this up without a fight.

We will persevere.