MMORPG.com World of Warcraft Correspondent Deborah Dietrich writes this look at the various popular addons for priests in Blizzar'd popular MMO.

Grid

There are a number of mods that are currently popular with raid healers. One popular mod is Grid. In a compact area, it shows all members of the raid and their state of being: their health, any debuffs, HOTs, etc. It is very lightweight, so should not cause lag and can be customized with a number of different modules. You click on the name of the person in the grid that you want to heal, debuff, etc. and hit the appropriate key. While initially a bit challenging to configure, this mod is very popular with healers. There are a number of good modifiers for this addon, which make it even more useful. Recommended additions to Grid are: GridIndicatorSideIcons, GridManaBars, GridSideIndicators, GridStatusRaidDebuff and GridStatusPWShield.

Read Priestly Healing - Addons and Such

Healbot + Decursive = Healer

Grid is like Oreos, just because everyone likes it does not make it good.

Healbot works much better  imho.  U just put the mouse pointer over the name and click the appropiate mouse button to fire off that heal..no clicking name then clicking again..one-click..one-heal..hehe

Very well done.

This article is insightful into mods that would enhance raid healing, but also lists options for people to consider. I would think that most of these mods would apply for other healing classes also.

I don't use healbot or vuhdo. I don't like click casting as you are limited in what you can cast by the number of mouse buttons you have. And I want to be able to click on the person in the frame to select them.

I use Grid2 as it's easier to configure than grid. I can see health, health deficit, who's dead, offline, feigh death and range. I can see if I need to remove disease, dispel magic, if they have a weakened soul debuff. Everything I need to know very quickly and in a very small space. The key is getting all the information you need as a healer quickly and easily without cluttering up your screen and getting in your way.

I have all my spells and abilities hot keyed. So I can select a person and take the appropriate action instantly.

I also use xperl. Very configurable and it also shows me what buffs, debuffs I have on my taraget that are mine. I only care about what I have cast and not what others have so this helps me sort through a mess of icons.

And that is pretty much all you need. I do use other mods but these are what I consider essential for my priest.

    I play the game with out all the assists, not real interrested in adding a program that play's the game for me, when i play a board game, i dont ask some one els to roll the dice for me.

      So if your creating a Party/Raid please ask " do you have programs that will illiminate mistakes? " we dont want to play a game of chance."      

 this way you dont get some one who plays the game without, Hand rails, Crutches, Bowling ally bumper rails.

What's a good add-on that lets you select raid members by keyboard?  In a 5-man group I can use F1-F5 but that doesn't work in larger raid groups.  Having to mouse-over anywhere on the screen messes me up and makes me a much slower healer.  I prefer to do everything by keystrokes instead.  It doesn't even have to be "direct addressing", that is, I'd be fine with another key that cycles through groups of 5 and then has F1-F5 apply to that group.  For me that would still be much faster than having to mouse over them.

Originally posted by Binhoberde

Healbot + Decursive = Healer

Grid is like Oreos, just because everyone likes it does not make it good.

I wholeheartedly agree with everything you said here EXCEPT....I would also add VisualHeal to your list of healer must-haves. :)

Originally posted by Reeper

    I play the game with out all the assists, not real interrested in adding a program that play's the game for me, when i play a board game, i dont ask some one els to roll the dice for me.

      So if your creating a Party/Raid please ask " do you have programs that will illiminate mistakes? " we dont want to play a game of chance."      

 this way you dont get some one who plays the game without, Hand rails, Crutches, Bowling ally bumper rails.

 

QFT. I cant see how these add ons differ from any other cheat.

Originally posted by grandpagamer

Originally posted by Reeper

    I play the game with out all the assists, not real interrested in adding a program that play's the game for me, when i play a board game, i dont ask some one els to roll the dice for me.

      So if your creating a Party/Raid please ask " do you have programs that will illiminate mistakes? " we dont want to play a game of chance."      

 this way you dont get some one who plays the game without, Hand rails, Crutches, Bowling ally bumper rails.

 

QFT. I cant see how these add ons differ from any other cheat.

I'm guessing neither of you guys raid heal.

Originally posted by cybermerc

Originally posted by grandpagamer

Originally posted by Reeper

    I play the game with out all the assists, not real interrested in adding a program that play's the game for me, when i play a board game, i dont ask some one els to roll the dice for me.

      So if your creating a Party/Raid please ask " do you have programs that will illiminate mistakes? " we dont want to play a game of chance."      

 this way you dont get some one who plays the game without, Hand rails, Crutches, Bowling ally bumper rails.

 

QFT. I cant see how these add ons differ from any other cheat.

 

I'm guessing neither of you guys raid heal.

Raid Heal all the time, but i do have to pay attention, i play the game for it is, i do keep from instance run where  a DK or Pali is Tanking, Priests have a harder time healing a tank that cant hold Agro on a Multi pull, 2- 3 complete heals and i have Agro, game over.
 

Originally posted by Reeper

Originally posted by cybermerc

Originally posted by grandpagamer

Originally posted by Reeper

    I play the game with out all the assists, not real interrested in adding a program that play's the game for me, when i play a board game, i dont ask some one els to roll the dice for me.

      So if your creating a Party/Raid please ask " do you have programs that will illiminate mistakes? " we dont want to play a game of chance."      

 this way you dont get some one who plays the game without, Hand rails, Crutches, Bowling ally bumper rails.

 

QFT. I cant see how these add ons differ from any other cheat.

 

I'm guessing neither of you guys raid heal.

Raid Heal all the time, but i do have to pay attention, i play the game for it is, i do keep from instance run where  a DK or Pali is Tanking, Priests have a harder time healing a tank that cant hold Agro on a Multi pull, 2- 3 complete heals and i have Agro, game over.
 

I haven't pulled aggro as a healer since TBC was launched.  Are you sure we're playing the same game?

And seriously guys, "cheats"?  I don't have a /rolleyes big enough for that kind of thinking.  These addons change the way your raid frames are laid out, giving you better information in a faster manner. 

Originally posted by laephis

Originally posted by Reeper

Originally posted by cybermerc

Originally posted by grandpagamer

Originally posted by Reeper

    I play the game with out all the assists, not real interrested in adding a program that play's the game for me, when i play a board game, i dont ask some one els to roll the dice for me.

      So if your creating a Party/Raid please ask " do you have programs that will illiminate mistakes? " we dont want to play a game of chance."      

 this way you dont get some one who plays the game without, Hand rails, Crutches, Bowling ally bumper rails.

 

QFT. I cant see how these add ons differ from any other cheat.

 

I'm guessing neither of you guys raid heal.

Raid Heal all the time, but i do have to pay attention, i play the game for it is, i do keep from instance run where  a DK or Pali is Tanking, Priests have a harder time healing a tank that cant hold Agro on a Multi pull, 2- 3 complete heals and i have Agro, game over.
 

I haven't pulled aggro as a healer since TBC was launched.  Are you sure we're playing the same game?

And seriously guys, "cheats"?  I don't have a /rolleyes big enough for that kind of thinking.  These addons change the way your raid frames are laid out, giving you better information in a faster manner. 

Changing the game to your advantage, using programs aquired outside  the game. Yeah i call them cheats.

You know a good healer does not need those silly macros to heal.  They are only for the challenged players.

Originally posted by cybermerc

Originally posted by grandpagamer

Originally posted by Reeper

    I play the game with out all the assists, not real interrested in adding a program that play's the game for me, when i play a board game, i dont ask some one els to roll the dice for me.

      So if your creating a Party/Raid please ask " do you have programs that will illiminate mistakes? " we dont want to play a game of chance."      

 this way you dont get some one who plays the game without, Hand rails, Crutches, Bowling ally bumper rails.

 

QFT. I cant see how these add ons differ from any other cheat.

 

I'm guessing neither of you guys raid heal.

You know what I find funny about this.  The belief that you need mods to be a good healer. 

I was a top raid healer for a top 10 guild and never used mods.  I remember once in the arena a team mate was commenting that I must have a bunch of mods.  I never told people the only thing I used was decursive and CT for the alerts. 

I honestly think if you set your screen up the same way each time and organize your hotkeys correctly you can be just as fast as anyone with a mod.

You just need the sack to try it on your own. 

Same thing goes for tanking too.  You can tank with almost no mods.  Just need to work at it.

I left almost over a year ago though. 

ADD ons are nothing more than cheats.If a game needs them then the game is either too hard for you to play,because you have no skills or the game design is just not good enough.The only other factor is that you are just looking to plain cheat,beat the system,beat the game mechanics.

The thing that gets me is i cannot believe Blizzard does not clamp down on 3rd party cheats and this is exactly what they are.I might also add that this site MMORPG does not approve of posting 3rd party software,witch again is EXACTLY what add ons are.

I know of many of these add ons and i also know what they do,and they are 100% cheats.I know CURSE.com and WOW interface are two common hangouts for the add ons.Some are merely to make the interface look better,i am ok with those,but the more popular ones that cheat the game ,are the ones i do NOT approve of,especially if they give an advantage in a PVP game and in MANY cases they do.Many players use the add ons to automate a 2/3/4/5 man setup all played by one player.It would be ridiculous for anyone to claim these are anything but cheats.

I witnessed the same thing in FFXI,players using the WINDOWER,witch again was 100% a platform used to break the game mechanics and cheat.

lol...

Some of these mods do exactly the same thing the regular ui does, just not so messy.  You can have raid bars from the wow ui...Just grid makes it MUCH MORE compact, and much easier to understand. OH GOD YOU ARE CHEATING.

In pvp, there are mods that really can put you ahead, I agree there.  But in pve, give me a break.  You are not a better healer if you don't use mods, nor are you the best if you do.  Decursive used to do your job for you, by one click of a button, it would auto dispel people.  Good to see you used that, since that basically removes a lot of clicks and time.

And since so many of you "elite players" that visit mmorpg mention that the addons are a cheat, could you tell me why than, blizzard has added so very many of them in game?  They took what people did, and made it part of the game.

OH NOES BLIZZARD IS CHEATING IN THEIR OWN GAME!!!!

Originally posted by Swanea

lol...

Some of these mods do exactly the same thing the regular ui does, just not so messy.  You can have raid bars from the wow ui...Just grid makes it MUCH MORE compact, and much easier to understand. OH GOD YOU ARE CHEATING.

In pvp, there are mods that really can put you ahead, I agree there.  But in pve, give me a break.  You are not a better healer if you don't use mods, nor are you the best if you do.  Decursive used to do your job for you, by one click of a button, it would auto dispel people.  Good to see you used that, since that basically removes a lot of clicks and time.

And since so many of you "elite players" that visit mmorpg mention that the addons are a cheat, could you tell me why than, blizzard has added so very many of them in game?  They took what people did, and made it part of the game.

OH NOES BLIZZARD IS CHEATING IN THEIR OWN GAME!!!!

I agree with Swansea.  A lot of the new features added into the WoW content are from previous popular  mods, Wow Vanilla was more or less just a basic layout of what the developers came up with, and over the years have added content to make the game and interface more user friendly, and hence why they allow the game to be modded, so they can find out what the masses really want.  If they wanted to, they could probably stop mods being used in game, but that would slow down ideas on how to better the game.  Other games like LOTR don't really allow users to make mods, apart from appearance, so i'm sure Blizzard would stop the mods if they were not welcome.  Blizzard only stops mods that create income, or automation of characters as, this ruins the WoW economy, and gives a other players an unfair advantage. 

What about viruses key loggers and patch days.  I have heard negative things about all those.  If blizzard puts out a patch and your game doesn't synch becuase of the add-ons you can't play?  Or have to reinstall the whole game again?

How can you tell you are downloading he add-on from a trusted site?

You needed addons to heal starting fromKarazhan to Sunwell then OS with 3D, Ulduar hardmodes, TOTGC. Even in Naxx it helped sometimes to save people who stay in slime. You were a lot slower without a proper interface, and I can tell you this from experience. If you missed .5 secs on landing a heal, your tank was dead.
So stop being a hero and saying that you're so good that you could raid heal hard things without it. You can't. Blizzard's simplistic interface won't allow it and that's one of the reasons they made these addons. Even Ghostcrawler was dodgy when asked on how would healers and tanks perform without addons. Because raids are almost balanced around these addons.