For many, the role of the Healer is something to be avoided all together. For the few, however, healing is a meaningful, rewarding and challenging job, albeit an often-thankless one. Being a healer also tends to make one a popular player. This popularity can wane at higher levels if you don't pick up on a crucial principle: your job is more than just healing. Depending on your class, you will have other duties that include keeping buffs on your companions, de-cursing them, stepping in front of the mage if he or she draws aggro and the list goes on. Addons are one way that the aspiring healer can shift some focus towards his or her other duties. By taking some of the busy work out of casting healing spells, buffs and keeping the party free of curses, poisons and/or diseases, programs like Healbot Continued can take you from being a good healer to being a stellar and indispensable member of any group.
Healbot Continued uses the embedded Lua scripting language to reconfigure information vital to healers. This retrofitting presents an easily manageable interface that helps you maintain a greater degree of situational awareness. For many of you wondering how this works, it's simply a matter of our program, Healbot Continued in this case, listening to the World of Warcraft client for events. In combat, information is literally flying back and forth between the player (client side) and the game server (server side). Healbot Continued simply listens in and picks out information it wants. This is true of almost all addons, which sift through event information for a variety of purposes. Healbot Continued is easily one of the more powerful addons around, as it goes above and beyond what is normally expected of healing addons.
The developer of this add-on, David Marshall, took what was a good add-on and has created what can be arguably called a healer's best friend. Through his efforts, David has taken the original Healbot and evolved it into a must-have. You may be wondering what makes this add-on a cut above the rest, so here is a list of what Healbot Continued can do for you.
- HealBot allows for 20 key mouse combinations to cast any beneficial spells.
- HealBot allows for 20 key mouse combinations to cast on disabled bars.
- Any usable item can be added to all combos.
- Any existing macro can be added to all combos.
- Target, Focus and Assist can be added to all combos
- HealBot can track and display who has aggro
- HealBot can be used for decursive functions
- HealBot can be used for monitoring buffs and buffing
- HealBot's appearance can be configured and preferred appearances can be saved as skins.
- HealBot can show self/party/tanks/checked targets/extras/pets in a raid, extras can be filtered and sorted.
- Multiple HealBots in a party/raid sync incoming heals.
- HealBot will accurately range check at all times for spells and items.
- HealBot has a built in res monitor
- HealBot has a SmartCast out of combat option, this will cast a spell in the following order..
- res
- decurse
- buff
- heal
- user setting
rogue, who may have scored one too many critical hits. The other very important feature to note is that if other members of your party have Healbot installed, incoming heals are synchronized. This means that if you're making a split-second decision on whom to heal next, you'll have a visual indication of what spells your fellow healers are casting. A good example would be knowing if your paladin is in the middle of casting Holy Light on your troublesome Fire Mage, saving you the wasted time and mana of healing the same aggro bunny. This functionality is built-in healer coordination, something you won't find often.
In the next installment of Addon Spotlight, I will go over the features of Healbot Continued and explain what they are and how to use them. If you're curious, check out this add-on and let me know your thoughts!
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
2-24-2008 @ 11:34AM
Crispana said...
I used to love my HealBot but I got really bored of healing by just clicking bars. Yeah this addon is really helping you out but in my opinion it's taking the hard and challenging part of healing. That's why I went back to Grid and pressing my buttons :)
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2-24-2008 @ 11:44AM
zedwards said...
Oh this article was just a tease!
I have used healbot primarily since I seriously started getting into healing. While it is not prefect (it has been buggy for me lately) using it with others in raid is invaluable because of the synching. I underestimated it while using grid (which I love also) but I feel like I may be going back to healbot.
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2-24-2008 @ 11:58AM
SaintStryfe said...
I'd suspect that a serious rewrite will be in order for 2.4 when the improved combat log shows up.
2-24-2008 @ 12:03PM
Snailking said...
Another alternative for healers is Pitbull. It shows esimated heals, over heals, configurable unit frames and raid frames, aggro tracking, etc.
I'll give this one a try too.
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2-24-2008 @ 12:36PM
Procyon said...
@1 So, you are saying that if you use healbot it makes your life as a healer easier? Well who would want that?
I have been using healbot for quite some time now and I find it a pure necessity for me. To be able to see who has aggro and how many hit points each raid member is down/how much my heal should hit for is indispensable. I cannot imagine how I would be as effective with out it. While one of my other main healers that I raid with uses Grid with clique I enjoy using healbot. It is intuitive and gives me all the information I need right beneath my mouse. I just wish I could get every other healer we run with to use it...then the sync function would be useful for me.
Healbot is a great healing addon and I have also noticed it could technically be used for other classes as well. With target and assist functions....a tank could make use of it, but most likely that would not happen.
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2-24-2008 @ 12:46PM
Comely said...
Are there advantages of Healbot vs Grid+Clique? Or is it just a different flavor?
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2-24-2008 @ 1:17PM
PeeWee said...
What's with all the random stupid links in the blog article? Bear tanking? Nose-picking? Is it just to make it appear more interesting, since you couldn't find anything to support it? Your retarded links draw aggro from the vital points, when they should provide links to more information regarding the subject.
Without them, this would have been better, even worth reading. Now it's just... stupid.
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2-24-2008 @ 2:06PM
Justin said...
I on the other hand think they are funny...
2-24-2008 @ 1:28PM
Dipstick said...
I think it's personal preference which you use - from looking at both I think its possible to achieve the same functionality with grid + clique.
After healbot started bugging recently for me (as well - still does now and again), I thought I'd try grid. I ended up tearing my hair out trying to customise it to something I liked (although I admit it was prettier), and reinstalled healbot.
I'm still using the mod now, when I'm not in a healing role because it's clear, small and neat and still offers click casting + smart casting. I hope the random bugs get ironed out though.
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2-24-2008 @ 1:48PM
DKSpree said...
I hate add-ons with "bot" in the name and this one is no exception. I always outheal other healers relying on this crutch of an add-on and I use just xperl (to display aggro and debuffs, etc.) and my keyboard/mouse.
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2-24-2008 @ 1:53PM
Arajal said...
I tried Healbot once, didn't like it. Doesn't give me the sense of control I like when healing. Ever since then I have manual healed, with only X-perl Unit Frames to help. At one time I did use a mod called Smart Heal, but when TBC came out it was bugged to hell and unusable. It is, however, how I got my heals to be on the hotkeys they are on now.
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2-24-2008 @ 1:59PM
kaoskongo said...
Thanks for the great article on healbot. However, in the future, I'm hoping for a grid vs healbot vs pitbull (vs manual?) article to be covered, so that us healers can figure out the pros and cons for each of the programs and see which is the one for us, individual wise ^_^
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2-24-2008 @ 3:40PM
Lenina said...
I think any mod to help healers out can be a nice tool when they're first starting out healing, but once you start raiding you need to ween yourself off of mod-heavy healing. I'm not bashing the article, it was a nice read, but my advice to healers is "get used to using your brain to heal".
Some mods that enable 1-click casting are ok because you still have to think about which heal you are using, what rank to use, etc, and these just save you a few extra milliseconds that could mean the difference between a kill and a wipe. But I think when too much information is thrown at you it can get distracting.
The only healing mod I use is X-Perl Unit Frames. I'm a very visually oriented person, and you can set it to change the color of a person's health bar based on the percentage of health they have remaining (i.e. yellow at 50%, red at 25%). This way I can just scan over the raid frames and if I suddenly see yellow or red, I can react quickly to that. I also set it to show the health deficit of a player (the actual amount of health missing) which help me to decide which heal to use.
Again I'm not trying to discredit the mod or the author of the article, just throwing in my 2 cents.
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2-24-2008 @ 4:24PM
Kav said...
xperl w/ only health difficiencies shown on the raid bars.
if it says -5000, greater heal, simple.
i also have hot counter, aggro indicator, and the 'being-healed' indicator on, as well as it highlighting who i can dispell/abolish
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2-24-2008 @ 5:40PM
Procyon said...
I want someone who manually heals to explain why doing it manually is better than using a mod.
I know it's just an elitist jerk answer I'm going to get, but please explain how it's better.
I've manually healed before and do not see the benefit to doing so. I can out heal most people in my raid using my crutch of an addon regardless of how they heal.
End of story.
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2-24-2008 @ 5:40PM
Procyon said...
I want someone who manually heals to explain why doing it manually is better than using a mod.
I know it's just an elitist jerk answer I'm going to get, but please explain how it's better.
I've manually healed before and do not see the benefit to doing so. I can out heal most people in my raid using my crutch of an addon regardless of how they heal.
End of story.
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2-24-2008 @ 5:41PM
Procyon said...
Double post...lame.
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2-24-2008 @ 6:40PM
Denniz said...
@ Lenina
You really don't have a clue do you?!
Don't let the word "bot" in Healbot confuse you, Healbot is comparable with things like Grid/Clique or raidframes with hot keys. In essence Healbot is just another type of raidframe that uses mouse combo keys to heal. It doesn't automate anything in combat, it does no auto spell-rank choosing and stuff like that. With Healbot you still have to choose the type of heals you use and you still have to program the different ranks you like to use.
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2-24-2008 @ 6:53PM
Sibe said...
Grid + mouseover macros > Healbot.
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2-24-2008 @ 9:02PM
Silenius said...
Would I be correct in assuming this mod just devours system resources? Most of the time when I heal I am playing at my friends house on my old laptop which doesn't perform well with mods that are tough on the system. Also does it have anything to help with BG healing? Specifically a way to show who is standing near you (Like how decursive will light up) would make it worth trying to run it just for the choke point in AV alone when there are 30 people running amok and the health bars all blur together so it takes forever to target the right person.
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