This is a guest post courtesy of Hafengrim

Introduction

There are some instances of the default Blizzard UI that are perfectly serviceable. Tracking ability and item cooldowns, buffs and debuffs, and triggered abilities are unfortunately not part of that group. Watching for abilities and buffs in the default UI means looking between the top of the screen and the bottom of the screen. That’s not where all the action is happening, though, and it’s frustrating to miss important procs or deadly debuffs because you’re hunting for one icon in a swarm of many, all while standing in an environmental hazard on a boss fight. This is where TellMeWhen comes in.

The addon author describes it best: "TellMeWhen provides a flexible system of icons for displaying vital information – and only vital information – about cooldowns, buffs, debuffs, and reactive abilities… always in a consistent place on your screen." There are many addons that help keep track of all those things, but TellMeWhen wraps it all up in a neat, user-friendly, configurable package. Instead of flashing text or space-consuming bars, TellMeWhen’s design is very similar to a normal action bar, making it perfect for players who are new to using addons and UI enhancements. Icons will appear (or disappear) to notify you when spells and abilities are either available or unavailable. It’s simplicity is almost Zen-like.

Configuring the Addon

The addon options are available in the AddOns tab of the default Interface Options menu. Configuring TellMeWhen consists of three steps:

Step One: Setting Up the Icon Groups

Icon Groups are similar to configurable action bars. They have a variable width and height (up to 7 columns and 7 rows) and can be configured to show all the time or only during combat. With four separate configurable Icon Groups, there are up to 196 possible notification slots. Once the Groups have been configured, they can be resized and positioned anywhere on the screen. As seen in the screenshot, the Groups can be anything from small and unobtrusive to obnoxiously large and in-your-face, ensuring that you never miss an important proc or cooldown.

Step Two: Adding Notifications

Right-clicking on an empty slot will bring up a dropdown configuration menu. The first thing to do is to get the exact name of the buff/item/spell that the notification will be watching for and type it into the "Choose spell/item/buff/etc." window. Then, select the type of notification from the Icon Type menu:

• Cooldowns – Whether from items, spells, or abilities, cooldown notifications will tell you when something is usable (or unusable, if you prefer).
• Buff/Debuff – This kind of notification will tell you whether a buff or debuff is currently active, or inactive if you need a reminder to refresh it. Additionally, this can be set to watch for the buff on various units: the player, the target, the target’s target, the focus, or the player’s pet.
• Reactive Spell/Ability – For abilities you can only use under special circumstances, like Rune Strike, Execute, or Riposte.
• Temporary Weapon Enchant – It can sometimes be hard to miss shaman buffs and rogue poison icons amongst the clutter of any UI. This will show the presence of a temporary enchant for your weapon. If you’re dual-wielding, you can create two notifications, one for the main-hand and one for the off-hand.

Once the type of notification has been chosen, type-specific behavior settings can be set. The behavior determines when the notification appears or disappears.

Step Three: Locking Things Down

The final step is actually the easiest. Once Icon Groups have been configured and notifications are set, typing /tmw or /tellmewhen will lock the addon and get it up and running. Most notifications tend to be combat-related, so the icons will disappear from the screen when not in combat, conserving valuable screen real estate.

Advantages

• Simple interface makes it easy to configure
• Easy to position and size Icon Groups
• Invisible when not in use
• Lots of notification slots
• Low resource usage

Drawbacks

• No drag/drop functionality for Icon Groups
• Each individual character needs to be configured separately

Conclusion

I’ve been leveling an enhancement shaman and having TellMeWhen has made it easy to see exactly when cooldowns are up on my important abilities: Stormstrike, Lava Lash, and the various Shocks. Also being able to see when I need to refresh my Water Shield buff has reduced my downtime a lot since I have rarely ever had to stop and regen mana (of course, that maybe that’s just because Shamans are made of awesome). As a Disc priest, seeing oversized shield buffs and weakened soul debuffs on both my focus and my target in exactly the right place on my screen take a lot of stress out of managing bubbles. The lack of drag/drop functionality is a minor quibble. And only players who have multiple characters of the same class would lament the lack of a Save Profile feature.

If you’re looking for an addon to help remind you of when things expire or when you can cast a certain spell again, TellMeWhen is a perfect solution. It is available at WoWInterface.com and Curse.com.

Postscript

If you prefer to click on action bar buttons to activate spells and abilities (versus binding things to specific keys), there’s an interesting trick that would allow you to create "clickable" Icon Groups. If you have an Action Bar addon that supports opacity settings, overlaying a bar with 0% opacity on top of a TellMeWhen Icon Group would allow you to "click" a notification as it appears, if the bar and icon group have the same abilities in the same slots and are of the same relative size.

Zen garden photo courtesy of saragoldsmith