Raid Awareness is a Learned and Practiced Skill

Forwarding this blog post from It's Dangerous to Go Alone: Link

Oh shit am I a baddie!

After a two year break I'm raiding again. Started tanking more towards the end of Wrath, then all through Cata (til we quit), and started again this month. And all that time I've been doing a decent job of it. I used this site to do all the class stuff as best I can, and learn the fights better...

But never, ever, had I ever even opened up the DBM interface to adjust a damn thing! I've been running with defaults all this time. Now that I read that post I feel embarrassed that I never looked at what I could do.

I'm properly shamed, thanks!

While on the subject - what recommendations do you all have for bossmod warnings?

I'm not a raid lead so I guess I can turn off all the brez and bloodlust tracking - do most of you all go rather minimal with warnings? Seems it would help.

What I do not like are the limited audio options - are there ways to load your own audio tracks?

My favorite relevant addons are DBM, GTFO, NeedToKnow, and Weak Auras.

I actually leave DBM at default most of the time, only turning off things that are distracting. Whether I'm tanking, healing, or DPSing, everything stays the same, I just pay attention to the things that are relevant.

GTFO is so close to mandatory, I don't even know how people raid without it. It isn't a crutch so much as it's a baseball bat to the ear saying GTFO NOW!

NeedToKnow is a simple, lightweight buff/debuff tracker I use to show the SotR buff, cooldowns, trinket procs, Sacred Shield/Eternal Flame, Forbearance debuff, boss debuffs, Bastion of Glory, Weakened Blows on target, and strength boosts (potion, trinkets, Dancing Steel). It may seem like a lot, but with 6 bars above and three bars below my character frame, I can see at a glance what my situation is. I also have bars for Forbearance debuff and boss debuffs on my Focus frame, so I can see what my co-tank's situation is.

Weak Auras mostly just tells me to stop being a noob and turn RF on.

DBM performs decently well out of the package. The only thing I really prefer to move are those bars, but mostly because they cover other parts of my UI.

You should indeed be minimalistic on information shown. The more information there is, the less easy it is to spot the information that's important to you. Disable the DBM warnings that have no effect on tanks (if you're playing a Tank class), and move all information that's of little importance to you, like DPS meters, to the corner of your screen, and pull the important information close to the middle, but so that you can still see your character and the world directly around her.

GTFO is really nice, yes.

Thels wrote:DBM performs decently well out of the package. The only thing I really prefer to move are those bars, but mostly because they cover other parts of my UI.

I can't remember, is the default setting for the bars click through or not?

Guess I may have to look at GTFO. I really never looked into it as DBM warnings were always enough for me, but perhaps it does more than I assumed.

I'm really liking Theck's WeakAuras strings. Its not like I needed rotation help, but keeping me from looking down at an ability bar is the big benefit. Cooldown availability too - all in close proximity requiring less looking around. And I think thats the best thing about UI mods like these - getting things you need to see close to you, and getting things you don't care about far away. Leaving more time for environment awareness.

I even started using CLCRet when I run as Ret, after being arrogant about not using it in Wrath and Cata. Thought it was for baddies, I did. Again, didn't need help with the rotation - but not having to track an ability bar has increased my environment awareness.

lythac wrote:

Thels wrote:DBM performs decently well out of the package. The only thing I really prefer to move are those bars, but mostly because they cover other parts of my UI.

I can't remember, is the default setting for the bars click through or not?

Now that you mention it, I don't think it is. You can click the bars to spam the remaining time in raid chat. I fix that together with their position.

Also, if you like DBM, and play more than 1 char, get DBM Profiles. Linked settings across all your characters (though you can opt for different profiles).