Monday, April 20, 2009 at 12:29AM | Llyra Configuring Grid
The strength of the unit frame addon Grid is that it will expose a vast sea of critical data in a very concise space. Take this screenshot, for example, captured during an Alterac Valley run.
What is Grid telling me in this abbreviated shot? Half of the raid is out of range. Spinelasher, a Death Knight’s ghoul, and two nearby warriors have my Earthliving HoT on them. The ghoul is 2300 health short of full. Everyone around me is marginally injured, but my health is about 40% down. I am affected by a magical effect of some sort, probably a slowing frost effect. Endea (something, probably Endeavor) is affected by Curse of Agony, which I can cure, and is at half health. Another pet, called GrimRea something, is dead. The warrior named Bhaest has aggro.
That’s a lot of information. And if you are not familiar with what each pip means, it can quickly devolve into confusion or noise. The secret to Grid is to build up the settings yourself. To developing that intimacy of understanding with usage. It encourages you to build the perfect interface for your needs.
With that in mind, let’s look first at how Grid presents information. That unassuming little box comprises five discrete layers. High layers tend to obfuscate lower layers, but not completely.
The addon composits these layers together to present the final picture to you. Each player in your party/raid gets a box with those layers in the Grid display.
Note that there is nothing here about data. A pip in the lower left-hand corner of the icon layer is just a dot. It’s up to you to define what that means. Architecturally, Grid employs a clean division between the data model and the view of that data. Even the healing bar does not necessarily represent health. It could show mana instead, if that’s the way you roll.
The set of data sources can be intimidating. Names, deficits, buffs, debuffs, range, aggro… There are literally dozens of data points feeding into this system.
Because of the wealth of information you could be showing, you will want to approach your choices with a plan. It’s tempting, at this stage, to think about where you want to show data. Don’t. First, figure out the what.
Here are the data points I found important:
- Unit name
- Health deficit
- Incoming heals
- Aggro
- Debuffs I can remove
- Debuffs I can’t remove
- Mortal Strike effects
- Dead/Incoming resurrection
- My HoTs
- Out of range
Finally it is time to bring the model and view together. Go back to the five layer composition diagram and decide how you want each piece of data displayed.
Now, let’s make it happen. First, some guy made a video. This will get you a solid grounding in Grid’s menus.
As you saw, you can get to the Grid setup using the chat command /grid config. It also registers itself as an LDB data source, if you use LibDataBroker. (Update: It’s a Fubar data source not LDB. To display in LDB, you must use the Fubar2Broker addon. — thanks Evilpaul)
The Status menu is the list of data points. Each can be Enabled or Disabled; you can set their priorities (more on this below); they can be range filterd; colored; and many have miscellaneous settings to tweak. The defaults are generally good. Don’t fiddle until you become familiar with the tool. And then, take changes slowly. Try them out as you go. It is easy to get yourself in a bind changing the data provider settings.
The Frame menu contains the meaty part. It is here that you wire up data providers to the interface. It has pages for each of the display options on the diagram. Go through each display point and check those data you want to show, and uncheck anything else.
For example, I designated my upper left corner icon for Aggro, so that is the only data source I left checked on the right pane.
There might be a complication or two…
- The correct frame setting choice for the healing bar isn’t the most obvious in the world — choose “Incoming heals”. What you will get is a semi-transparent extension of the bar showing the unit’s estimated health after the spell lands.
- Data provider priority allows Grid to select the most important item when multiple could show in a single space. My Label 2 line, for example, can show health deficit and incoming heals. To me an incoming heal is more important than the deficit, so I assign it a higher priority. Similarly, an incoming resurrection is higher priority than a label saying the unit is dead. Each provider has a priority from 1 to 99. Usually the defaults are good, but if something is obscured that you think needs to be sorted higher, this is what to change.
- There are many plugins for Grid that you will find useful. Once you’ve got the basic addon configured and working to your liking, go through the options available to you. Try out anything that appeals. My plugins include:
- GridAlert - Makes a chime on triggers like debuffs
- GridAutoFrameSize - Resizes the Grid frame to its optimal shape
- GridManaBars - Everyone loves mana bars, right?
- GridSideIndicators - Extra icon displays, at each of the four side edges of the frame
- GridStatusHots - Data providers for your HoTs
- GridStatusRes - Data provider for incoming resurrections
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Reader Comments (24)
wow. this is really helpful. good work!
GridIndicatorCornerText is another good plugin which can be a more specific indicator of HoTs. It helps with efficiency in applying Lifebloom especially, though it is equally good for getting the most from any HoT. Very nice write-up, Llyra.
Pretty nice post, Llyra. As a healing dr00d, I am fully dependent on Grid. It's the centerpiece of my healing UI for any raid. It's especially useful for druids, since it allows you to easily monitor who has which of my four HoTs on them, and how soon they're gonna expire.
The true potential of Grid is only unlocked by combining it with Clique, however. I personally use a nice little Grid addon called GridSideText to show all my HoTs on a target. Lifebloom is displayed at the bottom side, Rejuvenation on the right, Regrowth on the left, and Wild Growth on the center. This becomes intuitive since I use Shift-Left Click for Rejuvenation and Shift-Right Click for Regrowth.
One other thing I found useful was GridDynamicLayout. Instead of grouping raid members bases on their groups (group 1, 2, 3, etc..) it groups them based on function (tanks, healer, melee dps, ranged dps). This way, you can easily keep an eye on tanks, and better able to react to certain situations (e.g. melee dps gets hit with a whirlwind, so you know when to use WG and quick heals).
The only problem I face with Grid are some random bugs, the most annoying is that if I happen to D/C during a fight, when I relog Grid seems to disappear.Other than that, it works fine most of the time
The only thing that stops me from using Grid is the lack of the ability to bind "click" and "right-click" to heals, without affecting my standard unit frames, like I can on HealBot.
(as mentioned above, Clique can bind clicks to unit frames - it affects all unit frames, but HealBot).
That's really it. I've used Grid, but got quite accustomed to be able to just click for lifebloom and right-click for rejuv, that having to hold a key modifier to do it is just a killer.
(main reasons is I move around a lot, and being able to move (with keyboard) *and* still heal(with mouse click) is invaluable as a druid).
@Gotama, it's not a bug, it's how the unit frames work. Mods are unable to modify or change unit frames while in combat, which adds a limitation of them reconfiguring if you log in right into combat.
Any way we can have a unit's health value displayed as an absolute value instead of or in addition to a deficit value like the Grid Default in one of the Text areas.
Also, Raid Icons? I use an add on called "GridStatusRaidIcons
@Philip -- using Clique you can define left and right click casts, and it can be filtered down to just Grid's unit frames. It isn't identical to Healbot, and personally I chose not to do it. But it is possible. If you go down that road, what you should do is make click bindings for Select and Menu.
@Gotama -- The reason I don't use one dynamic layouts anymore is a need to know how to divide up Prayers of Healing. Since that is group-based and such a powerful tool for raid healing these days, it's important to know where it's going to land.
@Blackdog -- I'm not seeing a way to show full health value, but I'm looking into it. Trying to figure out the GridStatusStrings plugin to see if it does it.
And as people have noted, GridStatusThreat has been retired and its function assumed by the base Grid addon. I'll edit the article to remove it.
Thanks for the good work!
I've used gridstatusstrings in the past for absolute values, but I can no longer get it to work since last major patch.
Great post. I've been using grid for a while without really knowing what I'm doing, so this is a very useful guide thanks :)
My main is a priest, but I noticed last night on my shaman that Grid doesn't show earth shield out of the box. How do you monitor where your earth shield is and how many charges it has left?
Also, do you have a feed please?!?
There's probably a better way to show Earth Shield, but I just added a new Buff to scan for by typing in the name. Status | Auras | Add new buff...
This had the side benefit of allowing me to see where other restoshams have their Earth Shields as well.
RSS feed is here. I added a link for it above under the search box.
My preference is to use macro'd mouseover macros. Started using those after my fingers started aching after clicking so many times.
Thank you!
Grid does not support LDB natively, it only supports Fubar and a minimap icon.
If you want an LDB launcher then you need to use fubar2broker.
Ah, gotcha. I have Fubar2Broker already so it must have done that without me realizing. I'll correct it in the text. Thank you.
First of all, I love grid. There's not much you CAN'T do with it. But I'm having a serious problem with the GridStatusRaidIcons. I installed it the other day for Anub, but the icons on my grid bars are so LIGHT, I can barely see them and I cant pick out my target very quickly as a result. I looked everywhere I can think of and I can't find< or don't know where to go> to darken the icons.
[IMG]http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y292/Ariana_cc/WoWScrnShot_100709_235623.jpg[/IMG]
Is how it looks currently. This is how they should be.
http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=if0bno&s=4
I don't use GridStatusRaidIcons personally, but all the other color options are down in the Status part of the menus. If you see the "Aggro alert" screen shot above shows one of the color selectors there. Opacity is part of that selection process. Yours appears to be rather low.
I think I have them set up as far as they can go, is this where you are talking about?
[IMG]http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y292/Ariana_cc/WoWScrnShot_100809_132052.jpg[/IMG]
Sorry to be such a pain, but if I don't figure this out it's a constant strain on my eyes trying to find my icon target. I wouldn't be using it, but its a requirement on my part to have SOME way to find my icon target to heal penetrating cold.
Opps, sorry I have to add in, as you can see it never changed color, it was set up as high as it could go from the start.
I think you're looking at the Priority slider there. What you need to hit is the Opacity value. I don't believe the slider is labeled. It's in the popup box when you click on the color chip. It's white in your screenshot.
(Sorry, I'd have a picture, but I'm at work right now.)
As a counteroffer, I'd suggest you look at GridStatusRaidDebuff . It will give you a much more precise identifier for Penetrating Cold and all other boss debuffs than the raid icons DBM is popping around. My own comments here.
That was it, Thanks! I just had to play around with it a bit more, and I use the debuff addon for grid, but for some reason our raid lead wants to ASSIGN us specific icons, DBM throws a icon on each person on a penetrating cold wave, since its a different person each time the icons change on people as anyone can get the debuff. So theres no telling where my assigned target will pop up at ><. But that did the trick I knew it was something simple I just couldn't get it right. Thanks again!