Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Best Mod for Tracking Druid De(Buffs)

Over the past few months I've seen a couple mods recommended by other druids, namely TellMeWhen and RoguePowerBars. I tried both and then found something better, Auracle.

TellMeWhen lacks the ability to differentiate between my rip and someone else's rip. Now I don't mind if I take advantage of someone else's mangle or trauma, but I need my own rip.

RoguePowerBars does the job but it is had some serious UI issues. First off when there are no buff and debuffs shown you can't hide the bars. Second, the rogue abilities autopopulate next time you log in even if you remove them all. This causes the debuff bar to appear when I was displaying everythign on the buff bar. Easy enough I made that unused bar really small and shoved it in a corner and made it transparent. Still I had the buff bar taking up real estate when it wasn't being used.

So I did some looking and came across Auracle De(Buff) Monitor. It it very similar to RoguePowerBars in functionality, but it's UI is much better. The add-on consists of creating one or more windows each containing one or more trackers. A window monitors a specific target and a tracker monitors a specific de(buff).

I have two windows set up, one for me and one for my current target. In my player window I have one tracker tracking my savage roar. In my current target window I have mangle, rake and rip.

Each tracker can support multiple de(buffs) and treat them as a single entity. For example my mangle tracker tracks mangle (cat), mangle (bear) and trauma and considers both debuffs I applied as well as others (done with check boxes).

My rip and rake trackers only track debuffs applied by me so if there is another feral druid I won't have to worry about confusing my debuffs with theirs.

Windows consist of an icon for each tracker so they are kind of like mini toolbars. I have both my windows right under my toon's feet and they only appear in combat. It's a nice centralized location so I don't have to look far.

I am also toying with IceHUD so I have the windows just under that. I like IceHUD for in your face combo points mostly, but also for watching my energy and health. I have the rest disabled. Haven't used it in a raid yet still thinking about whether I like it or not. I'm very used to getting all the info IceHUD provides elsewhere.

Back to Auracle though, this is the best mod in my opinion for any class tracking multiple (de)buffs. I'm sure I will use it on my alts as well.

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