Overview
It's easy to get overwhelmed as a leader or a puller in World of Warcraft raids, but there are a lot of good mods that help to make that process easier.
Guide
Efficiency
DownTimer
Download DownTimer from WoWInterface
I wrote DownTimer. It doesn't have a lot of options, nor has it been updated recently, but it doesn't need to be -- it's a very simple mod.
It shows you how much time you've spent out of combat and how much time you've spent in combat since its last reset.
It's a good way of objectively tracking how much time is being spent unproductively week to week.
MagicMarker
Download MagicMarker from Curse
As I mention in Pull! A Guide to Faster Raids, Fusion doesn't actually mark most pulls, so I haven't had tremendous experience with this mod. But it comes highly recommended.
MagicMarker lets you quickly mark targets just by mousing over a trash back while holding a modifier key.
If you want, you can have it learn from you as well, by configuring the priority and crowd control methods on a per-mob basis so packs are marked consistently from pack to pack and night to night.
RaidCooldowns
Download RaidCooldowns from Curse
Download RaidCooldownsDisplay from Curse (as a raidleader you want both of these)
This is a nice little mod that tracks what raid-valuable cooldowns aren't available and when they will be. It helps remove some of the vent chatter in trying to find out who has lust up or what battlerezzes haven't been used yet.
You can configure which of these to show:
- Druid: Nature's Swiftness, Rebirth, Innervate, Challenging Roar
- Hunter: Misdirection, Feign Death
- Mage: Counterspell, Ice Block
- Paladin: Divine Shield, Blessing of Protection, Divine Intervention
- Priest: Pain Suppression, Fear Ward, Guardian Spirit
- Rogue: Cloak of Shadows, Kick, Distract
- Shaman: Bloodlust/Heroism, Nature's Swiftness, Reincarnation, Fire Elemental Totem, Earth Elemental Totem, Mana Tide Totem
- Warlock: Soulstone Resurrection, Soulshatter
- Warrior: Shield Wall, Last Stand, Pummel, Challenging Shout
If you have guildmembers who won't run oRA2 so you can see their cooldown status, they can just download RaidCooldowns which is very lightweight. It broadcasts to both oRA2 and RaidCooldownsDisplay.
Health/Mana
Grid
Download GridManaBars from Curse
Grid is my personal choice in raid frames simply because of the incredible information density. While it natively doesn't show mana, you can also get GridManaBars to add that information.
Or you can do what I do: tell grid to make a white box in the corner of someone's grid frame if their mana is below 30%.
There are many other optional Grid modules, I would suggest searching on Curse for them
XRS
XRS was far more useful back when every shaman was a healer, but it still has its uses. It shows 8 different types of bars:
- alive
- dead
- health
- mana
- range
- offline
- pvp flagged
- afk (needs oRA2 or CT_RaidAssist)
You can further specify by class or group number. For example, I used to have a bar that showed the mana of all priests, paladins, druids, and shaman.
While it no longer has quite as fine-grained usefulness, it's still a great quick visual check to see the raid's overall status before pulling.
RABuffs
As far as I know, this is functionally identical to XRS for raid status.
Its buff status monitoring is somewhat better than XRS's, however.
Debuffs
Utopia
While not as good as the TBC-era mod "Demon" (aka pDebuffList), Utopia still takes up only a small amount of space.
It creates a row of debuff icons that are in one of three states:
- Dimmed - your group cannot apply the debuff
- Red - you group can, but it's not up
- Normal - the debuff is applied
You can also mouse over each of them to get a tooltip explaining which debuff category it is and what your raid can do.
Wipe Analysis
Recount
Recount is useful to show not just dps done and healing done, but details like who did how much damage to what mob (which is useful when learning Sartharion, if you are trying to emphasize non-AE damage, for example.)
It can also show how much each person healed on, for example, a tank.
Expiration/Grim Reaper
Download Expiration from Curse
Expiration allows you to see the lines leading up to someone's death.
It's a great way to either disprove "But we were spamming heals on him!" or to support the healers assertion that, yes, the tank really did just get one-shot and there was nothing they could do.
Grim Reaper is a similar addon to Expiration, with a slightly smaller graphical footprint. YMMV; pick whichever of the two works best for you.
FailBotDownload Failbot from Curse
While not an analysis mod per se, it certainly helps stop debates over who did or didn't just die to a void zone, who did or didn't just fail dancing on Heigan, and who did or didn't just eat a lava wave.
It can announce to any channel you choose.
LoggerHead
Download LoggerHead from Curse
LoggerHead is also not an analysis mod in and of itself, but it enables analysis: it will automatically start and stop the combat log when you zone to and from raid zones (configurable.)
Then you can upload the combat log to services like World of Logs and WoWMeterOnline.