VuhDo is a rising star in the world of healer addons. Two of the most common ways healers put their raidframes to good use are through Healbot, and by combining Cladhaire’s Clique addon with Grid. I’m currently a subscriber to the latter method, but I gave VuhDo a shot and it’s a solid contender.

VuhDo combines a lot of the best features of the two combinations above. It provides highly customizable raidframes that are tailored specifically for healers. Nearly any healing style can be catered to, with all of the available features and adjustments. In particular, you can display indicators and/or timers for your HoTs, including support for multi-target spells like Chain Heal, Prayer of Mending, or Wild Growth. VuhDo also includes a buff monitoring tool, so that you can be sure everyone in your raid has the buffs you can offer. Finally, VuhDo has built-in click-casting support that is very powerful and customizable, while requiring no separate addon.

If you keep reading after the interview, we even have some action shots!

Interview with Iza, author of VuhDo

Tell us a little about yourself in real life. Where are you from? What do you do?

My name is Jan, I’m 36 years old.
I live in Germany, in a small city named Burscheid close to Cologne. In my job I’m coding cash register software for a major European hardware retailer. All my toons are situated on realm Gilneas (EU). My main characters are “Izaak” (my dreadful face-melting shadow priest) and “Iza”, my former heal pally that’s currently retri-specced while still leveling.

How long have you been developing addons?

I’ve been coding addons for about 3 years now, and it’s become a more serious hobby for about 1 year. My first addon was called “PalIza”. It was one of those once popular no-brainer heal addons that always chose the raid member with lowest health and automatically healed him. Certainly these times are gone for good, but in the moment I realized they would turn off my addon I got really furious.

What sort of platform do you code on? What editor do you prefer?

I’m using a somewhat average Windows PC with UltraEdit on it and a LUA syntax highlighting plugin. For laying out options screens I sometimes use WoW UI–Designer. I think I’ll swap to Eclipse soon, because VuhDo has become really big.

Do you have a background in programming?

I’ve been programming since I was 12 years old. My first computer has been a Commodore VC20, after that an ATARI 800XL, then an ATARI 520 ST. At this time my best friend (who’s my employee nowadays) and me were very much – let’s say – “investigating copy protection systems” of computer games – only for private testing reasons, of course :) The home computer era ended when I was about 18. I then turned to upcoming Personal Computers, I studied Information Science and Business at University of Heidenheim. Since that time I’ve been professionally coding C and Java most of the time. (I know, this sounds really nerdy, but I swear I had a lot of fun, girls, acne, emotions, radical social, religious & political opinions and (legal ;-) ) drugs in my youth.)

What led you to write VuhDo?

I spent some of time modding HealBot code for my own purposes. Needless to say, that with every Healbot update those changes were overridden, and I had to start over again.

Thanks to my job I know a lot of programming techniques, to keep code maintainable, compact and well arranged, and to do performance and memory usage profiling and optimization. Some of the more popular addons seem to me either like sloppy programming or they have by far outlasted their life-cycle. So: I also felt I could do better, really.

In the end, the time I decided to create a considerable addon on my own has been a personally very hard one for me. I had to care for my family a lot and hence were always too late for raiding in the evening. Well, at least I had enough time for coding.

What do you feel are the biggest differences between VuhDo and two of the other most common configurations, Grid+Clique or HealBot?

I think the differences are not that big and it’s mostly a matter of taste. In the end it’s all about clicking on a player’s status bars to make them get better. There are several really good healing tools out there. If you’re asking me to enumerate some hard facts, why I would prefer VuhDo over other addons, I like to point out the following features:

• up to 10 separate panels,
• user friendly and powerful configuration,
• decent solution for rebuffing,
• automatic mouse-over-macros,
• performance optimized to the bones

But much more important for me is to stay close to the community. This always turned out to be an advantage for both sides. I’ve always been trying to act reliable, honest and dedicated (which is not always easy):

• If people are asking the same questions over and over again, don’t be impatient, think about the comprehensibility of your addon.
• If people found a bug, don’t tell them it’s a feature or a “transient individual case” (programmers usually love to do this).
• If people want you to code weird stuff or things you just don’t like, don’t raise expectations that you will do it.
• A lot of people will treat you like their employee. Stay kind or ignore them.

What do you like about those addons? What do you dislike about them?

I don’t feel that it’s up to me to judge someone’s work. And I really don’t want offend somebody. The points I listed below are just my opinion as a user.
Healbot:
+ easy configuration, best out-of-the-box usability.
+ mother of all click-heal addons, just have to pay tribute to that fact.
+ low cpu consumption
0 fairly frequent updates
- Some tenacious bugs
- sometimes lacking coherence of the bars
- inflexible, little options

Grid+Clique
+ Most pure display, no frills
+ Modular concept with plugins, very flexible.
+ Proper programming techniques
0 medium cpu consumption
0 can’t tell much about usability, haven’t really used it yet.
- always found it a bit drab

You’ve been keeping a very active presence in a thread over at the PlusHeal forums. It’s allowed both you and your users to get a lot of feedback in a very short time. Do you feel their feedback has influenced the direction you’ve taken a lot?

Yes of course. The community at PlusHeal forums is the best thing I met lately. All participants of that thread have always been very friendly, helpful and open minded. Thanks to the many, many ideas from these people, I’ve been able to make VuhDo quite a handsome piece of code. I very much appreciate that.

How do you feel about Blizzard’s new addon policy?

I think this policy is completely inept. The only thing Blizzard will achieve with this, is to upset some really good coders and their addons. What’s the use? Why isn’t it at least allowed to ask for donations? I mean: most users treat you like an employee…
The most ridiculous thing is that they claim judging addon code:

“3) Add-ons must not negatively impact World of Warcraft realms or other players.
Add-ons will perform no function which, in Blizzard Entertainment’s sole discretion, negatively impacts the performance of the World of Warcraft realms or otherwise negatively affects the game for other players. For example, this includes but is not limited to excessive use of the chat system, unnecessary loading from the hard disk, and slow frame rates.”

This is the most outrageous bullshit I’ve ever been forced to get to know. 1. Literally EVERY addon will slow down framerates, more or less. Otherwise they wouldn’t be existent. Will I have to discuss my addon with a Blizzard rocket scientist’s “sole discretion” or will he just turn it off if he doesn’t like it? Usually people tend to remove addons that “negatively impact their in-game experience” themselves. This is arrogant and stupid. 2. There is no way for addons to access hard disk. Hey, this is even more stupid but less arrogant.

How do you feel about some of the more publicized reactions to it, such as Outfitter’s and QuestHelper’s authors apparently throwing in the towel?

I’ve just read the long statement the Outfitter author wrote about his reasons. I’ve got to say: It’s pure truth! I’d sign every single word. I bet I’ll feel the same in a few months.

Screenshots

Below, you’ll see the look you can achieve with just a little time and effort. I have class color turned on, as well as corner box indicators for HoTs, with timers enabled. These were taken in a quick WSG match.

For more information, and some more screenshots of VuhDo in action, visit the aforementioned sticky thread over at PlusHeal forums. If you want to download VuhDo and give it a shot yourself, look no further.