Tuesday, March 24, 2009

My Grid Settings

This is a list of my settings for Grid. You can use it to mimic my Grid layout.


Extra Grid Addons:


Frame:

These are the items I have "checked" for each of the frame sections:
  • Border:
    Buff: My Wild Growth (higher priority), Buff: Tranquility, Low Mana Warning
  • Health Bar:
    Incoming Heals (0.5 opacity)
  • Center Text:
    Death Warning, Debuff: Ghost, Feign Death Warning, Offline Warning, Unit Name
  • Center Text 2:
    AFK Alert, Incoming Resurrection, Lifebloom Duration, Resurrected
  • Center Icon:
    Buff Group Mark of the Wild, Buff Group Thorns, Debuff Type Curse, Debuff type Poison, Ready Check. I also added Bone Armor, Burn, Fusion Punch, Frost Blast, Pyroblast, Mortal Strike, Mortal Wound, Saronite Vapors, and Unbalancing Strike.
  • Top Left Corner:
    Aggro Alert
  • Top Left Icon:
    Raid Icon
  • Top Left Corner Bottom Left:
    Well Fed (yellow square, only shows out of combat)
  • Top Right Corner:
    Buff Rejuvenation, Buff My Rejuvenation (higher priority)
  • Bottom Left Corner:
    Incoming Heals
  • Bottom Left Icon:
    Debuffs Sara's Anger, Sara's Blessing, Squeeze
  • Bottom Right Corner:
    Buff Regrowth, Buff My Regrowth (higher priority)
  • Bottom Right Icon:
    their own target's Raid Icon, useful for watching dps targets at a glance
  • Frame Alpha:
    Death Warning, More than 40 yards away, Offline Warning, In Vehicle
  • Mana Bar:
    Mana, Death Warning

Frame Advanced Options:

These are the settings I put in the Advanced tab.
  • Enabled Center Text 2
  • Icon Border Size: 1
  • Icon Size 10
  • Enabled Icon Cooldown Frame
  • Enabled Icon Stack Text
  • Enabled Mouseover Highlight
  • Corner Size 5
  • Font: Friz Quadrata TT
  • Font Size 7
  • Frame Height: 23
  • Frame Texture: Gradient
  • Frame Width: 26
  • Mana Bar: Side Bottom, Size 10
  • Frame Orientation: Vertical
  • Text Orientation: Vertical

Grid Auto Frame Size:
  • "Always use Pet Layouts" is checked. I like being able to see pets, and heal them/cleanse them when the rest of the raid is okay. I found it necessary in cases like Sartharion trash, where pets would get cursed and heal the mobs when they attacked, and for fights like Razuvious in Naxx where you need to be healing the MC'd pet tanks.

Layout:
These are the settings I changed in the Layout tab.
  • Padding: 1
  • Spacing: 4
  • Scale: 185%
  • Border and Background Color: alphas at 0%

Status:
  • Added New Buffs/Debuffs under Auras: Frost Blast (used for Kael Thas), Sara's Blessing (Yogg), Sara's Anger (Yogg), Saronite Vapors (Vezax), Squeeze (Yogg), Tranquility (buff), Mortal Strike, Mortal Wound, Pyroblast, Burn, Iron Roots (Freya), Unbalancing Strike (Thorim), and Bone Armor (Razuvious, buff). Each has a color that is about 50% opacity.
  • BuffGroup:My Mark of the Wild has been altered to only show when that person is out of combat and the buff is missing from them. This keeps the icon from being annoying, and I usually know if someone died in combat and needs a rebuff without needing my Grid to tell me!
  • Health Threshold of 99
  • Feign Death Warning color changed to a more greenish gray to distinguish the hunters from those that are really dead.
  • Pet Coloring by Owner Class
  • and a ton of little color tweaks on rejuv and regrowth coloring under My HoTs so I can distinguish between the HoTs I cast vs the HoTs that a different druid cast. Details below.
For the HoTs, I opted to leave most of the colors as their defaults. The "cast by another druid" rejuvs and regrowths (those that don't specifically say "My Rejuvenation," etc.) I altered slightly to have a grayer, paler color for each HoT, and lowered the priority so that "My" HoTs would show on the frames overtop those cast by others, so that I can better watch their durations. The only reason I watch others' rejuvs and regrowths is so that I know I can use Switfmend on the target without having my own HoTs up.

Alternatively, you could have a single icon to indicate if the person is "swiftmendable," but if I'm separating my own Rejuvs and Regrowths, I don't see any reason not to have them show individually for those cast by another druid :) As long as the color is different, it's not a big deal!

Those cast by myself, "My Rejuvenation," etc. will change color as they reach the end of their duration. I chose blue-green colors for Rejuv and yellow-orange colors for Regrowth to help my eye quickly tell them apart at a glance, because when you're looking over a bunch of the frames in a large raid, the eyes can play tricks on you, just as with any other raid frame! I have them both turn red when they have a second left on my HoT, warning me with that flash of color that the buff is wearing off.


Tips for setting up your HoT/Buff/Shield colors:

  • Use a different color scheme for each corner.
  • Use 3 color thresholds for the time remaining, if available. Have the last second be a brighter color or a more noticeable change of color, so that you can catch the flash as the buff wears off.
  • Use the border frame for AoE over-time splashes, such as Wild Growth and Tranquility.
  • Use 60-40% opacity for any icons you wish to have display by setting the alpha in its color settings in the status menu.

2 comments:

Greg said...

Do you have any settings such as the one people use for KT, for fights in ulduar to make it easier to see who is targed. such as the fire nuke on mimron or anything?

shoot me a email steimel @ gmail.com as i found ur site surfing at work. lol

Kae said...

The "aggro alert" will light up to show who is targeted by a boss or any mobs. 3.1 seems to have added threat coloring to the aggro as well, showing a pale yellow if the person is gaining some threat (such as heals might do at the start of a pull, or aoe going off too fast for tank threat).

For boss-specific debuffs, you can add these to your debuff monitor: like adding Frost Blast for KT. I haven't added any yet for Ulduar, since Deadly Boss Mods tends to handle these alerts by itself by putting a raid icon on the appropriate person, but if you wanted you could find out what the specific debuff names are (Napalm Shell, for example) that you wish to track and add those manually under Status->Auras->Add New Debuff.