Grid and Customizable Buffs - Part 2
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While just about all of my guides are useful for anyone who uses Grid to see the status of their raid, this one is particularly useful for buffing classes. Part 1 focused on configuring your Grid to display short-term buffs on various raid members, specifically tank-related cooldowns. Part 2 (this part) will focus on configuring your Grid to display who has or doesn't have various raid buffs that you may be responsible for buffing. Since I'm a paladin, I use PallyPower for all my greater blessing and blessing needs. If you're a paladin and you're not using PallyPower, you're giving yourself a headache that you really, really don't need to be having. Even if all you do is pug things, do people a favour and get PallyPower. Having said THAT, let's move on to buffs that you might be responsible for.
Druids can cast Mark of the Wild (30m) and Gift of the Wild (60m). Death Knights, Hunters, Rogues, Shaman, Warriors and Warlocks don't have buffs in the same sense, and since pallies are already taken care of with PallyPower, those buffs I just mentioned are about all we need to consider in this guide. The first thing I recommend you do is to download GridSideIndicators, so you can add dots to the middle of each side of your individual grid frames, so you get one on the top, one on the bottom and one on each side, in addition to the four corners.
Download GridSideIndicators here: Since, again, I'm a paladin, I decided to create a new buff of Blessing of Kings to show you how to keep track of raid buffs. If you're a mage, replace it with Arcane Intellect, or if you're a druid, Mark of the Wild, etc. So let's get started! On the right side of any given frame of mine, if there's a yellow dot there, that's Sacred Shield. It's a short-term (30s-1m) buff, so I have it set to display as a dot, letting me see which targets have Sacred Shield on them and allowing me to make smart decisions about who should be shielded.
But I already have Sacred Shield configured, right? Right. So let's add in a new buff. I'll put in Blessing of Kings. You can replace it with a buff your class uses. (Even Vigilance or Focus Magic would show up!) So I go to Status, Auras, Add new Buff and then I typed in Blessing of Kings and then hovered over it to make sure it was enabled.
Then, I select where I'd like it to show up. I think I'd like to see it in the same spot where Sacred Shield shows up, which is the right side of my frames. The other sides are taken up with more important short-term buffs (like cooldowns for the tank) so I'll have Sacred Shield share real estate with Blessing of Kings. To do that, I go to Frame, Right Side and make sure there's a checkmark next to Buff: Blessing of Kings.
And that will give me...
Oh, ew, what the hell is that grey... oh. Right. I forgot to change the default colour back up in the Auras/Buffs area. Go back to Status, Auras, Blessing of Kings.
Select the colour option and pick a colour you want. I like blue, so I picked a shade of blue.
But do I really always want to see Blessing of Kings over Sacred Shield? Probably not. That's where the Priority setting comes in. By default, the priority for any buff is 90. So all I have to do to give Sacred Shield priority over Blessing of Kings is give Blessing of Kings a priority that's lower than 90.
There. 50 is definitely lower than 90. :)
So you can see here that I have Blessing of Kings and it's showing up in my Grid, too.
And now I have Sacred Shield active on myself, which shows up in my Grid as a yellow dot (in the same spot Blessing of Kings was -- the blue beneath it is part of my mana bar), because it has a higher priority to be viewed on Grid than Blessing of Kings does. But I'm a paladin and I have PallyPower to mess around with my buffs. I really don't need my blessings to show up on Grid. What if I were a druid, though, and wanted to make sure people had Gift of the Wild (or at least Mark of the Wild) at all times, but I didn't particularly want to see 25 dots on Grid frames to signify that? No problem. That's what the "Show if missing" option is for!
If Show if missing is selected, the dot will only show up on your Grid if that particular buff is NOT active on various people. This is great if people die on trash or to keep an eye on your raid-wide buff. What I'd recommend for the difference between the 30-minute and 60-minute buffs is this:
Show if missing for the 60-minute buff with a priority of 75
That'll have the following effects: It's also extremely handy for those who get a battle rez, use a soulstone or self-rez so you can take a second to buff them in combat. But what if you're not a druid or a priest? What if you're a mage and you don't particularly care if Death Knights, Rogues and Warriors don't have Arcane Intellect or Arcane Brilliance? That's where the Class Filter option comes in.
Just un-tick the classes you don't care about, whether they have your buff or not. There you go, you're all set to go out and play with your Grid buffs! Be creative! :) And, of course, don't forget to check out Part 1 for details on how to keep track of your tank's cooldowns or other, more temporary, buffs!
Your friendly neighbourhood holy paladin, |
