I’ve mentioned previously that I want to do a few posts on addons. I’m going to be talking in more detail about the addons I use in future posts, but for today let’s look at a couple of ones which are more tailored to our class.
So obviously one of our major abilities is that we use DoTs to bring down our foes, but the default UI makes these incredibly hard to track, unless you enjoy peering at tiny little images underneath the enemy health bar and giving yourself bad eyes. A good DoT addon should therefore either enlarge these graphics, provide visible numbers for each debuff so we can actually see how long there is before they expire, give us the timers in the form of a diminishing bar chart to compare all the durations at a glance, or all of the above. Let’s take a look at the more popular options:
- DoTimer is a fairly comprehensive addon which is very popular among Warlocks, especially those of us who are Affliction specced (the fools). With the default settings, it places a movable bar chart on the screen, which will then show the durations of all your DoTs on the targeted enemy, in addition to buffs you’ve cast and any debuffs which affect multiple targets, such as Howl of Terror. The addon is highly customizable, and can show (or not show) nearly anything. It also comes packaged with several other sub-addons, used for tracking cooldowns, buffs and for notifying you of certain events (which you can specify).
DoTimer
- Another well-known, similar addon is ForteXorcist, which is a generic spell and cooldown timer that’s similar to DoTimer. In addition to this, however, it features a host of Warlock specific utilities including, but not limited to, a soulstone manager, a summoning assistant and a shard tracker.
ForteXorcist
- The final timer addon we’ll showcase today is the one I personally use, because I prefer a more visual way of looking at spell timers. TellMeWhen is an addon which displays graphics similar to those found on enemy health bars in the default UI, except these ones can of course be configured and moved. The cooldowns or durations are represented in much the same way as the action bars refresh, by darkening the icon in a clockwise motion. The addon can be set to show timers for any buff, cooldown or debuff (this includes procs), both on yourself and on the target, and also allows for numbers to be shown on top of the images.
TellMeWhen in action on my screen - I have DoTs shown on the top row, procs on the second and cooldowns on the bottom.
As well as our beloved timers, there are a few other addons which are especially good for Warlocks I’m going to mention:
- Something Warlocks may need to manage (less so these days than in the past) is their CC, specifically Banish and Fear. For this, we have CCTimer, which essentially whacks a huge great message onto the screen when the CC is either fading or has expired. While it’s somewhat intrusive, it’s also hard to miss, as you can see from Curse’s priestly screenshot:
CCTimer
- People can be quite forgetful, and their damage can suffer for it. Indeed, I was chatting to a raider friend of mine recently (hi, Mindles!) who was telling me how she managed to do the whole first boss of the ToC raid without remembering to self-buff! This is why we have handy mods like WarlockReminder. It will print a message if you’re missing a pet or buff – such as Fel Armor or Spellstone – and also notifies you when the boss you’re fighting is low on health so you can remember to use an Infernal should you so wish.
- The final addon for now is the ubiquitous Necrosis. Ever been spammed by those annoying macros when someone hops onto their Dreadsteed? Yeah. Still, this all-in-one addon combines timers, macros, a shard tracker, quick-click menus for various things, including pet summoning, and then some. As with most addons it can be set up as you wish.
Necrosis
That wraps it up for today – until tomorrow!
Vel.
der Hexenmeister 