Post by Lochart on Feb 10, 2008 21:59:02 GMT -5
It's true in instances, Karazhan, and any other raid; some mods are so basic and required that it's a wonder Bliz hasn't built them into their standard in game UI already. Until they do however, this is the short list of mods you can't raid without.
As usual, you can find ALL of the below listed mods at various sites, the most popular of which is wow.curse.com
A Threatmeter
This is one of only two essential mods if you are not a raid leader or a cleaner (druid, priest, paladin, mage, shaman). The current favorites are KTMThreat and Omen. Both of these are compatible with each other, so if you have either one, it will work. It provides a rough estimate of the threat you put out through healing, damage, and "threat abilities" like sunder armor, distracting shot, vanish, fade, feign death, etc. Essential because you can see where you are on the threat list, and unless you're a tank, you want to be as low as possible, so it allows you to learn to control your threat output. Useful so you don't draw aggro and get one or two shotted by a boss in Karazhan.
A Bar mod
Essential. Popular bar mods include CTMod, Perl, and Bongos, but there are countless others. They allow you to display upwards of 9 castbars on screen at once, and assign keybindings to each slot (you can still use the mouse to click on the buttons as well of course). This means that when raiding, instead of having to cycle through your spell manually, you can literally have every spell you can cast displayed at the same time. This also includes trinkets, potions, and food and drink. Saves a lot of time bouncing between your spellbook and bars so you can find exactly the spell you need for a given situation instantly.
Decursive
Essential "cleaner" mod. This mod went through several iterations, died from a coding change in a previous patch, and was brought back to life by a clever player. It USED to bring up a written display of players who were affected by debuffs your character class could remove, and the name of the spell. Then all you had to do was click the list, and your toon would remove buffs as quickly as the universal spell cooldown would allow. Bliz decided that was too close to automating play, so prevented that from working.
The new Decursive now displays a small translucent square for each person in your party (including pets). If a party member is debuffed with something your toon can cure, the box becomes brighter, turns more opaque, and lists the debuff as well as the type (magic, poison, disease, etc.) Again, it will only light up with things your toon can cure, so whenever a box lights up, you should pay attention. To cure the debuff, you simply left click the box. This saves a LOT of time in a boss fight; instead of looking to see if someone has a debuff, if it's something you can cure, clicking on their name to target them, then clicking on the spell to cure them, you simply click on the box provided by Decursive. You don't even have to deselect your current target to do it. This speeds up cures immensely, and when you're curing dots that tic for 1K a second, reaction time matters a LOT.
This mod is also excellent because as soon as it's installed, it's ready to use. You don't have to adjust any settings manually; it recognizes what class you are, what you can cure, and will only display those debuffs. The grid of players can be made bigger or smaller, and moved around your UI so it doesn't get in the way of other play. Absolute must have for raiding priests, paladins, mages, druids, and shaman.
Deadly Boss Mods (DBM)
Essential raid leader mod. This has abilities and timers for all raid bosses in WoW. For example, for the Moroes fight in Karazhan, he does a rogue's Vanish every 30 seconds, then returns and puts a Garrote (massive dot) on a random player. DBM keeps track of a Vanish timer so you know when he's going to do it, but announces it through automated Raid Warnings in color to the rest of the raid. It also announces the player who gets Garroted, so healers know who needs extra healing besides the tanks. Like most other mods, once installed it requires no additional set up and will load and run itself automatically when you enter a raid (or BG's; it keeps track of timers for flags in towers in AV and flags in AB) Only one person in the raid needs to have this to make it operate for the whole raid, but that job usually falls to the raid leader, who is expected to be prepared. But, if you have memory to burn and like to be ready for anything, this is one to look for even if you're not a raid leader.
Natur Enemy Cast Bar (NECB)
Essential raid leader mod #2. All Karazhan trash mobs are tied to a boss on a respawn timer. This means that if the boss is not killed before the timer expires, the trash will begin to respawn, and the raid will have to fight through it again to attempt the boss. NECB automatically starts the appropriate timer when trash is engaged, and displays it for you, so you know if you're on pace to reach a boss, and how much time you have to attempt it before you'll have to reclear. You can then shift click the timer bar in chat to display it for the raid, to keep them posted as well. As an added bonus, it also keeps track of raid members spells and cooldowns. So you know how long polymorph, sap, freeze trap, shackle, and banish will last, so you can control if someone needs to either tank a new mob or reapply the appropriate CC. Again, really only essential for one person in the raid to have, but if more than one person does, it's useful.
See? It's a short list. The "raid leader" mods are slightly more memory intensive, so if your FPS is already shoddy and you don't have a lot of free RAM, you can skip them so long as someone in the raid has them. That said, I highly recommend getting all 4 of these mods (all 5 if you're a cleaner) so you can stay functional and as useful to the raid as you possibly can be.
~Lochart
As usual, you can find ALL of the below listed mods at various sites, the most popular of which is wow.curse.com
A Threatmeter
This is one of only two essential mods if you are not a raid leader or a cleaner (druid, priest, paladin, mage, shaman). The current favorites are KTMThreat and Omen. Both of these are compatible with each other, so if you have either one, it will work. It provides a rough estimate of the threat you put out through healing, damage, and "threat abilities" like sunder armor, distracting shot, vanish, fade, feign death, etc. Essential because you can see where you are on the threat list, and unless you're a tank, you want to be as low as possible, so it allows you to learn to control your threat output. Useful so you don't draw aggro and get one or two shotted by a boss in Karazhan.
A Bar mod
Essential. Popular bar mods include CTMod, Perl, and Bongos, but there are countless others. They allow you to display upwards of 9 castbars on screen at once, and assign keybindings to each slot (you can still use the mouse to click on the buttons as well of course). This means that when raiding, instead of having to cycle through your spell manually, you can literally have every spell you can cast displayed at the same time. This also includes trinkets, potions, and food and drink. Saves a lot of time bouncing between your spellbook and bars so you can find exactly the spell you need for a given situation instantly.
Decursive
Essential "cleaner" mod. This mod went through several iterations, died from a coding change in a previous patch, and was brought back to life by a clever player. It USED to bring up a written display of players who were affected by debuffs your character class could remove, and the name of the spell. Then all you had to do was click the list, and your toon would remove buffs as quickly as the universal spell cooldown would allow. Bliz decided that was too close to automating play, so prevented that from working.
The new Decursive now displays a small translucent square for each person in your party (including pets). If a party member is debuffed with something your toon can cure, the box becomes brighter, turns more opaque, and lists the debuff as well as the type (magic, poison, disease, etc.) Again, it will only light up with things your toon can cure, so whenever a box lights up, you should pay attention. To cure the debuff, you simply left click the box. This saves a LOT of time in a boss fight; instead of looking to see if someone has a debuff, if it's something you can cure, clicking on their name to target them, then clicking on the spell to cure them, you simply click on the box provided by Decursive. You don't even have to deselect your current target to do it. This speeds up cures immensely, and when you're curing dots that tic for 1K a second, reaction time matters a LOT.
This mod is also excellent because as soon as it's installed, it's ready to use. You don't have to adjust any settings manually; it recognizes what class you are, what you can cure, and will only display those debuffs. The grid of players can be made bigger or smaller, and moved around your UI so it doesn't get in the way of other play. Absolute must have for raiding priests, paladins, mages, druids, and shaman.
Deadly Boss Mods (DBM)
Essential raid leader mod. This has abilities and timers for all raid bosses in WoW. For example, for the Moroes fight in Karazhan, he does a rogue's Vanish every 30 seconds, then returns and puts a Garrote (massive dot) on a random player. DBM keeps track of a Vanish timer so you know when he's going to do it, but announces it through automated Raid Warnings in color to the rest of the raid. It also announces the player who gets Garroted, so healers know who needs extra healing besides the tanks. Like most other mods, once installed it requires no additional set up and will load and run itself automatically when you enter a raid (or BG's; it keeps track of timers for flags in towers in AV and flags in AB) Only one person in the raid needs to have this to make it operate for the whole raid, but that job usually falls to the raid leader, who is expected to be prepared. But, if you have memory to burn and like to be ready for anything, this is one to look for even if you're not a raid leader.
Natur Enemy Cast Bar (NECB)
Essential raid leader mod #2. All Karazhan trash mobs are tied to a boss on a respawn timer. This means that if the boss is not killed before the timer expires, the trash will begin to respawn, and the raid will have to fight through it again to attempt the boss. NECB automatically starts the appropriate timer when trash is engaged, and displays it for you, so you know if you're on pace to reach a boss, and how much time you have to attempt it before you'll have to reclear. You can then shift click the timer bar in chat to display it for the raid, to keep them posted as well. As an added bonus, it also keeps track of raid members spells and cooldowns. So you know how long polymorph, sap, freeze trap, shackle, and banish will last, so you can control if someone needs to either tank a new mob or reapply the appropriate CC. Again, really only essential for one person in the raid to have, but if more than one person does, it's useful.
See? It's a short list. The "raid leader" mods are slightly more memory intensive, so if your FPS is already shoddy and you don't have a lot of free RAM, you can skip them so long as someone in the raid has them. That said, I highly recommend getting all 4 of these mods (all 5 if you're a cleaner) so you can stay functional and as useful to the raid as you possibly can be.
~Lochart