I don’t use clique, for the simple reason that it gave me terrible RSI (stupid FoL spam). It did allow for a lot of space to be cleared off my bars to give me easier access to cooldowns. Mouseover macros suffice for me, and have the added bonus of being able to be adaptable to different situations. For instance, you can use the mouseover macro in the blog above to heal the target of target. This is really helpful on targets that bounce around the raid, meaning that you don’t need to watch aggro monitors as closely, or watch the target of target window then try to find that person on your raid frames.

I can’t see the attraction in using the stock UI. It’s cumbersome, it gives less information, and it limits you as a healer. If it works for you, great, but I can pretty much guarentee that if you shift to a healbot/grid setup your effectiveness will go up. As for the people who like the “traditional” way of healing….it’s a game. It’s been around for what, 6 years? That’s like racing in the F1 with a model T. It’s traditional, sure, but you can do so much mroe if you expand your horizons.

So i saw grid + clique is a popular combo and thought i’d try that, and now i absolutely love it. Grid is so configurable so i can prioritise the displaying of debuffs, hots etc that are on the target, see who has aggro, see incoming heals etc.

Using clique is amazing, as i have absolutely all my heals bound to my mouse. Standard left right and middle clicks are flash, greater and binding heals, then using shift for aoe heals (CoH, PoH, holy nova) and control and clicks for instant casts (renew, PoM, shield) then i have special abilities bound to my extra mouse buttons, like divine hymn, guardian spirit.

the awesome thing about having heals bound to my mouse is that:
1) i don’t need to target anyone, so i can keep my target on the boss and see his health at all times.
2) i keep the buttons on my keyboard bound to dps spells so i can easily chuck a few dots on the boss whilst not interrupting my healing at all.

If you haven’t tried the grid + clique combo i’d highly recommend it, very compact, very configurable, made my healing a lot better.

Actually in some cases having Addons IS a necessity. There are absolutely hundreds of disabled players out there that make bloody good players in any role. The standard Blizzard UI is abysmal, (quite probably to encourage the Addon authors) and for many of these players the placement of the main UI features can make game play incredibly difficult.

Without the work of Addon authors to make things accessible for them, many players would miss out on playing entirely. Of course it doesn’t make them any less of a player…some people do require modifications to the default UI in order to play the game in a way that a large amount of players take for granted.

Wenchie’s last blog post..Never Forgotten

@Andrea: I agree that you can heal nice without addons. Wow is not a game of infinite complexity or where reaction speed and reflexes can infinitely contribute. But healing is about judgement. To make a judgement you require information and to weigh information. A UI unable to do that, is a UI that does not adapt to your needs.

In the end, it’s about how you wish to play the game. I want to perfect my techniques to their limit: I have that 80$ mouse with extra precision and speed, daily reflex training, theorycraft to get the most out of my gear and computer tuned for fluent FPS. I need a UI to match this.
And… all these efforts combined make a difference: not infinitely, but it makes a difference.

Thanks for the correction!

Andrea’s last blog post..Warning: Personal Opinions Below