Non-Druid Total Hot Tracking
“But Zel,” you say, “I don’t HAVE hots, or rather, I have 1-2 piddly hots that don’t matter much. I’m not a druid. I don’t have to time my hots, be particularly careful not to overwrite them, or think about them much at all.”
That’s the reason you might not be tracking your hots in Grid/Vuhdo/Healbot, but I’m not talking about your hots. I’m talking about when you’re in a raid and you have to play nice with others. I’m talking about your hots and their hots, all together.
This is information you need to have. If a big boss ability is coming up, you need to know if your tank is hotted up to the gills (in which case you might not want to blow a save-tank cooldown) or is without a buffer at all. If you see that a squishie who just took a hit has 2 hots ticking on him, you may not want to direct heal him right away.
How to do this in Grid
This obvious easy choice is to use GridStatusHots + Text to give you the total number of hots (from all sources) on a target. You will need to use TEXT – meaning that you either dedicate one of your center text spots to hot count, or use one of the following plugins:
- GridIndicatorCornerText
- GridIndicatorSideText
- GridIndicatorText3 – an extra line of text in the center of the frame (between the first 2 that come with the addon)
First, configure your Total Hot Count
What’s the Lifebloom thing?
Do you want to count a 3-stack of LB as 3 hots or 1 hot? For me, I think there’s a huge difference between a 3-stack and a single stack, but it’s up to you.
Then you place the total hot count somewhere there’s a text option.
“But I use Healbot/Vuhdo”
Too bad! Google F Search time.
Huh, I always wondered why that tracking option existed in GridStatusHots… Thanks
I’ve met druids who didn’t track whether a Swiftmendable HOT was on a target. “I know which ones I have Rejuv on” was their reasoning. Um… fail? But then again they probably didn’t have Glyph of Swiftmend either so I’m ok with them not using up my HOTs.
Another useful one is Weakened Soul; it’s super useful if you’re running with a priest to know that the tank is *not* going to get another shield in the next five seconds.
Vuhdo has nice calculations that show estimated incoming heals in the next second or so; it can have weird effects if someone cancels a heal but it’s still a nice visual thing.
Now that GridStatusSwiftmend is not being updated (cry), the simplest way to determine swiftmendable hot is to have an indicator that lights up if rejuv OR regrowth hot is on the target, regardless of source (just use the default and don’t check “show only mine”). I can’t take credit for that idea – it was by “Healing Through Stupid” – but the blog no longer exists.
Tracking Weakened Soul/Shield for non-priests is tomorrow’s topic!
When I read your (very good) guides on Grid I realise how horribly under-utilised my Grid really is. I just installed it because I wanted some tiny unit frames that showed me a few basic things (since most other raid frames are too big.. the new Blizzard one takes up what feels like 30% of my screen..)
I’m thinking maybe I should go through all of your posts and set my Grid up to be a lot more useful than it currently is.
Eh, it is a personal preference really. Sometimes I think I get bogged down in TOO MUCH INFORMATION. If what you’re doing is working for YOU, then don’t change TOO much. Instead of starting grid from scratch, try adding in 1-2 things you consider important and go from there.