Grid is a Lock!
Although I had some issues setting up Grid, some readers here came to my rescue and helped me to resolve my largest issues with the Grid + Clique combination. Yesterday I fiddled around with my UI for a couple of hours until I thought I was good to go. I asked some guildies to be guinea pigs and the brave souls volunteered to run some BC Heroics with me.
LOL! Everything ran very smoothly in terms of my ability to heal using Grid, so I took my new setup into Naxx last night without a hitch. I think Grid is here to stay for me!
A lot of people responded to my Clean Slate post where I was showing off what I thought was a delightfully uncluttered UI telling me how I could further streamline it. Because there was so much interest, I thought I might put up a before and after screenshot and let you all know what I changed between the Clean Slate post and last night, in case anyone else is working to minimalize the visual noise on their screen while maintaining functionality like I am.
Here’s the Clean Slate screenshot:
And here’s a different screenshot from my raid last night:
What’s changed?
1) I’ve set the opacity very low on my action bars unless I mouse over them, at which point the bars light up. Still using Dominos.
2) I’ve disabled the party and raid frames in Xperl. I can select raid or party members on the grid frames (using alt + left click), and still get all the information I might need about them without having to have all of that information up on my screen all the time.
3) I added Minimap Button Frame, a program that consolidates all the buttons around your minimap into a collapsable frame.
4) I added some mods to FuBar to try them out. Some are going to stay, some will definitely go.
5) I traded Healbot for Grid + Clique. The setup for Grid was involved, the menus are not terribly helpful, and I almost gave up on it, but in the end I’m very pleased with both the functionality and my ability to lose all the raid frames for Xperl and to have a smaller raid frame for healing than Healbot provided in raid mode.
6) I’m thinking of swapping places for my Minimap and the chat frame, as it will now fit in the bottom of the screen and clear up more real estate still.
My impressions of Grid:
First, it was not hard to make the transition from Healbot to Clique+ Grid once I got the thing set up correctly. I used the same key bindings, so I was essentially doing the same things. However, the reaction time seemed somewhat quicker. I can customize Grid for many more very specific situations should I wish to, further improving my reaction time. My biggest hurdle is getting used to the fact that I now have my UI set up so that alt + left click targets someone. However, I target players far less than I use Lifebloom, which is what has always been assigned to my left click on Healbot, and the tradeoff will be worth it in the end, I think.
I very much appreciate the accurate HoT timers that show up where I assigned them on Grid. They are definitely are a big improvement. I also appreciate the large amount of information accessible through Grid at any given time. It took me very little time to get used to and to learn to process quickly.
All in all, I think I’ve been converted! =) One last great big thanks to those of you who have provided advice and guidance in helping me get to this point. I’m such a happy cat! RAWR!
There are 11 Comments to "Grid is a Lock!"
I don’t think I’d ever get used to having to use alt-click to target people … Well, I probably would if I actually wanted to. It’s a clear improvement from what you had before, I’ll say that. =D
You’re a happy cat? Here I thought you were a happy tree! Oh well, disappointments …
I love Grid’s ability to show so much in such a small confined space, it’s great!
P.S. Here’s what my UI looks like: http://keldara.tumblr.com/post/93442016/keldaras-ui. I didn’t have time to set myself up in a raid setting, but oh well.
LOL all us trees have some kitty in us, Keldara, amirite? =) Your UI looks nice and linear. Thanks for posting it! I’m constantly tweaking mine, but I’m happy for the moment lol!
@keldara, yea the alt click targeting is a PITA at the moment. I’m thinking about looking into whether I can set up a mouseover targeting macro. I’m pretty sure Sydera at World of Matticus covered this, so I’ll be moseying on over there today to see what I can find out. alt click targeting isn’t THAT bad, but it’s not the smoothest function in the world lol
Awesome! I’m so glad you were able to configure it to work the way you wanted it to! =)
Pixiedark’s last blog post..Gogo Feral
Very nice. Massive improvment. Gratz.
tyvm! =) Last night I ended up switching out lifebloom and target. I now target by left clicking and cast Lifebloom with alt+left click. It was just too much of a hastle to alt+left click to target, and it isn’t the worst thing to make Lifebloom a bit harder to cast. Reminds me of the upcoming changes every time I do it. lol!
One very useful feature of Grid is that u can add custom debuff’s to it. I have mine set up to show an icon in the center of grid when Frost Blast is cast (Kel’Thuzad), so I can see exactly who has it and heal them quickly.
absolutely! I love how customizable it is, now that I’m not beating my head against the wall because I don’t understand all this crazy customization. lol!
I’m glad you’re enjoying Grid! I’ve been using it since BC and my favorite set up and mods that go along with grid are listed here: http://sites.google.com/site/restoforleaf/Home/grid
Three resto druids in the guild use that set up and its been working great!
Nice, Whispur! I’m really happy with the change. I was trepidatious about it for a long time, and it turns out I had some reason to be, as the setup was not exactly a no-brainer, and it’s taking some getting used to, but the light at the tunnel is bright, indeed, and I don’t see myself ever going back.
What is the main differences from HB to GRID?
I don’t use ‘click’ heals for most of my healing – all my hotkeys are mouseover heals. I do have Abolish Poison and Remove Curse setup for clicks – Right and Alt Right click.
I’m just not sure how Grid is better than HB looking at your setup vs mine. I’m not sure from reading your post what the ‘large amount of information accessible through Grid at any given time.’ is vs HB. I’ve never noticed the hot timers to be inaccurate in HB either. This is probably what I’d like to know more about or is it just the decimal seconds counting down?
I’m not sure it’s more than a coin flip the healers I know stand at about 50/50 using HB vs Grid – I guess because I really only use HB as a raid window replacement for the most part, that could be why I can’t figure out what the major differences are between the two.
I do need to remove the IceHud target buff/debuf list since I use quartz for that.
http://www.arkayas.com/ui.jpg