New holy looking for Action Bar adviceFollow

Well, the title says it all really.

I've dual specced myself as Shadow/Holy, with the intent to make things easier on the healers in our Guild.

However our healers are all druids, so cannot give me any practical advice...I have set up my action bars the way that seemed sensible (to a priest that has NEVER attempted to heal) but they don't seem comfortable...

If anyone could show me the way that they have set theirs up, that would be great.

I've just realised how pathetic this sounds, so am going to hit myself in the eye with a fork, but any feedback would be great. :D

Thanks in advance!

DrFolly.

Drfolly,

I do not think there is an ideal way to set up your buttons. It depends if you prefer buttons versus clicks and so forth. I would Smoopie's suggestion of Bartender 4. Great add on with lots of versatility to set up your screen so show it as you want it to be seen, while opening up a lot of on screen real estate at the same time.

With that being said, you will need to take a bit of time to configure it how you want it to look. I could get you a screen shot, but many would not like my set up, and truthfully I have a lot of keys bound to my mouse and the alt key. So you would not get the full effect. What you need to do is run some easier instances where you are 4 or 5 levels over the instance and have a group that wants to run and won't mind some basic mistakes as you tweak the system. Being that you are in a guild, see if you can help out some lower levels run through instances.

IMO, it is more about getting comfortable with all your abilities then with your layout. As you progress you will also see a need to potentially change how things are set up.

(Smoopie - Clique is great, but I only use it for dispelling diseases and magic effects as it lets me keep my buttons the way I want, and makes it manageable to dispell while healing. I am sure I will progress a bit more in my button selection for clique, but it is / where I started using it.)

While I recommend bartender 4, I think the sticking point of this post is not the mod that you should use, but rather the bindings that you should use. While using a barmod cerainly makes setting up the bindings easier, the keys that you assign are critical to your response time.

Now, all of this is personal preference, but the way I have my keys set up is as follows. (This is for holy)

1 Guardian spirit
2 Flash Heal
3 Greater Heal (I keep it there even though I don't use it as a rule)
4 Circle of healing
5 Renew

Ctrl-1 PW:S
Ctrl-2 Prayer of healing
Ctrl-3 Fade
Ctrl-4 Prayer of mending

Ctrl-Q trinket1/Hymn
Ctrl-E trinket2/Human racial

Dispells are done with ctrl-click through clique

Being left-handed as I am, the ctrl key is ideally positioned for my thumb, righties would probably change that. The point however remains. The trick is to keep all of your most critical spells in quick reach, that is, in a small area on the keyboard. This means that in a pinch you're not searching your keyboard for the right button to save someone. Healing is all about reaction speed and identifying the most appropriate heal at any given time (especially when you're playing a priest with a huge range of spells to choose from).

As I said before, there is no right answer to this question it is all about learning your layout and picking what suits you.

Incidentally you don't want to know my shadow layout because it is totally ridiculous. However retraining my fingers would take longer than I care to imagine. That said, it does maintain a lot of the same shortcuts, things like fade and trinkets all share the keybindings with my holy spec. no need to learn 2 sets of keys for those!

I use Dominos for bars and love it.

To save real estate, most of my mouseover macros do double duty (such as Renew if the target is friendly or SW:P if they aren't). Everything's on the bars even though I don't click - it's kind of like a cheat sheet. :)

I've got a Wolf King key pad, so the actual bindings won't make sense to anyone else, but my overall philosophy goes: two most frequent spells on mouse wheel up and mouse wheel down (Renew/Flash Heal for Holy, PW:S/Penance for Disc); next tier of spells on the keys where my ring, middle, and index fingers rest (POM, Renew, PW:S, Flash Heal, Greater Heal, depending on spec); next tier one row below for easy reach (Guardian Spirit, Greater Heal, Binding Heal, Circle of Healing, Prayer of Healing, etc. depending on spec). Those tiers aren't about how useful or pretty or great I think a spell is, just what I'm hitting most often.

In general I want to be able to hit at least Renew, Flash Heal, Shield, and Penance if applicable, without having to move my fingers.

I use my thumb to move forward and hit panic buttons. I turn, strafe, and move backward with my mouse.

Well;

As for bars, whether you go with Dominos or Bartender4 really doesn't make much of a difference, I reckon. They both have pros and cons but are mostly the same, afaik. Frameswise Grid is an addon you'll really have to try out, but it literaly only takes one fight to figure out if you like it or not. If you don't like it, there's two ways you can go - either use Healbot (which is mostly simple to set up) or go with either X-Perl or Pitbull; both are *highly* configureable (you can change the size, length, width, location and information shown on literaly EVERY aspect of a unit frame), but therefore take a lot of time and effort to set up.

I don't have any knowledge about Clique, though.

When you start playing with new action bar mods, check that things like vehicles work correctly. For instance, with Blizz action bars, when you mount a vehicle, you can utilize it's abilities by pressing your number keys. You want to have those abilities keybound.

I actually went back to a combination of Blizzard's action bars and Bindpad for keybinding, but I'll probably start playing with alternatives again, now that I've settled on my dual spec.

Any comments on keybinding with action bar mods would be appreciated. Do vehicles work right with your preferred mod? Do you use something other than the Blizzard interface for keybinding?

Of equal importance to action bars is your raid frames. If you give Grid a try, check the link in my sig.

I recommend using the new Curse client (free version) for installing and maintaining your addons. Curse and Wowinterface block wowmatrix where they can. When you first use the Curse client, check the third tab over for unrecognized addons and confirm those it gets right.

No problems with any of this with Dominos. You just tell it which bar is the possession bar, and taking control of anything (like a vehicle) will change that bar automagically to display that thing's abilities; when you leave/lose control it'll change right back. Keybindings are hugely fast; you put it in binding mode, then just click the button you want to bind and press the key you want to bind it to. Takes 3 minutes to do them all. Character specific keybinding is just a checkbox. I haven't looked at the Blizzard keybind box in ages.

I was pretty impressed when I got dual spec, expecting it would ***** up my bars, but no problems at all.

Nice,thanks. I guess I'll give them a try

edit:
Got Bartender 4. It's great, and does everything I want.

Edited, Jun 10th 2009 6:25am by dadanox

This reminded me of something that has bugged me. I changed back to the Blizzard frame for vehicle bars for FL. Originally, I could not get the gauges to show when using BT4. I did not know how much health and energy I had without the bar. I still have some issues after the fight occasionally (I sometimes need to /reloadui to get rid of the Blizzard vehicle bar). I'll have to play with it again if I remember, I always forget until I jump in the buggy, and then its too late!

Awww, but she's so pretty.

I know right? I probably never would've changed from druid either, except I switched to Horde and although I've tried several times, I can just never get into the cow. WTB Forsaken druid. Of course it would be contradictory to the nature of both, but imagine the rotting bear form. :)

Well, it's taken quite a while, and a lot of mucking around, but I am sticking with Dominos (thanks Teacake) which is by far the easiest to use (I don't mean the most customisable, just easiest...)

The only thing that upsets me a wee bit (unless I'm being thick and missing it!) is that I cannot place an action bar vertically, which is where I would normally put my Alchemy, Mounts, HS etc...just to keep them out of the way of the rest of my spells and so on.

Not a big deal to be honest.

Thanks for the hints 'n' tips guys 'n' gals!

DrFolly.