clique
Latest
Addon Spotlight: Raid healing addons, part two
Two weeks back, I looked into two fine contenders for raid healing addons, namely Healbot and VuhDo. There was a great and lengthy tussle between the two, and no clear victor was named, although VuhDo snatched a narrow lead. As I promised back in that column, I've gone away to test two more raid healing addons, or party healing addons, as you prefer. Actually, I tested three of them, to be precise, but one probably couldn't stand alone as a healing addon, and is more a raid frame replacement. Those three addons are Healium, Clique and Grid. I began with Healium, for no other reason than because that was the first one I decided to switch on, but as it happens that worked out pretty well for the testing as, when I wandered into the settings, I discovered it could work with Clique. Healium Healium takes quite a different approach to the other addons I've reviewed so far in this set of Addon Spotlights. VuhDo, Healbot, and Grid+Clique are all click-to-heal addons, that is to say, they take a set of either their own frames or a third-party set of frames, and set up mouseover macros on them. A left-click on a frame fires one heal at that player, while an ALT+ left click fires a different one. Healium, on the other hand, as can be seen in the header image, doesn't perform quite like this.
Henge Docks Clique: A new way to merge your Wireless Keyboard and Magic Trackpad
Many Mac users use a combination of an Apple Wireless Keyboard and a Magic Trackpad for their typing and pointing pleasure. Twelve South came up with a lovely way to merge the two devices into a single unit with the MagicWand (US$29.99). Now Henge Docks has developed a less expensive and more functional device called the Clique ($24.99) that should be a fierce competitor to the MagicWand. Design and Functionality Three minor issues with the MagicWand have been addressed with the Clique. First, I felt that $29.99 was a bit expensive for what is essentially two pieces of plastic and a tiny piece of silicone. Second, if I want to use the keyboard and trackpad in my lap, I'm out of luck with the MagicWand as there's no physical support for those peripherals. Finally, if I'm going to be away from my iMac for a while and wish to turn off the keyboard, I have to take it out of the MagicWand to have access to the power button on the right side. The Clique is actually a thin, bright white plastic rigid tray into which your Apple Wireless Keyboard and Magic Trackpad "click," hence the clever name. When the peripherals are snapped into the Clique, they form a rigid unit that can easily be used in a lap. I found this to be wonderful -- when I'm using the MagicWand, I have to place it onto my desktop and sit closer to the screen of my iMac. Now I'm able to place the keyboard and trackpad on my legs and move back a bit into a much more comfortable position in my chair. %Gallery-141081% Turning off the keyboard or trackpad is also easy. Henge Docks designed a small spring-loaded button into the right side of the Clique that can be depressed to power the trackpad on and off. In addition, there's a small slider underneath the keyboard that is used to turn the keyboard on and off without taking the keyboard out of the Clique. I was a bit concerned that the Clique would be uncomfortable for typing, as it adds a bit of thickness to the keyboard that doesn't exist with the Magic Wand. That concern went away as soon as I started using the Clique -- if you hold your hands in a proper position for typing, that extra 1/16th of an inch doesn't cause any problem. Conclusion I type a lot (I've written well over one million words for TUAW during my three-plus years here), and anything that makes typing and pointing more comfortable gets a thumbs-up from me. The Clique works very well and moves my keyboard and trackpad to a much more comfortable typing position. Now that turning off the keyboard is going to be easier, I'll probably get better life from my batteries. With the help of Henge Docks and the Clique, I think I'll be able to crank out another couple million words without too much damage to my arms and hands. The Clique would also make a wonderful holiday gift for anyone who wants a rigid keyboard/trackpad combo that they can use to make their daily Mac user more comfortable.
Addon Spotlight: Raiding essentials for healers
Each week, WoW Insider's Mathew McCurley brings you a fresh look at reader-submitted UIs as well as Addon Spotlight, which focuses on the backbone of the WoW gameplay experience: the user interface. Everything from bags to bars, buttons to DPS meters and beyond -- your addons folder will never be the same. As we get Raid Finder clarifications and new details, the excitement ramps up for this brand new feature coming in patch 4.3. Raiders and non-raiders alike are clamoring for new ways to experience the high-end, endgame content. Since we also now know the role makeup for the Raid Finder, healers will be in demand as each Raid Finder group will be made up of six healers. Healing is one of the most stressful jobs in World of Warcraft right now. The logistics for healing have changed dramatically since the Wrath of the Lich King days with a new emphasis on smart healing versus throughput. What that means is you have limited resources and need to make sure you're using them correctly. Healing is probably the most complicated role out there right now, if only because healers have a lot of responsibility. In the Raid Finder, encounter difficulties will be easier than we've seen before, but the fact is that players will still need their health bars above zero in order to beat a fight. Healer addons can be a divisive topic, so I'm going to stick with the basics for healers in raids. Your own mileage may vary, and you're going to want to try out different setups in order to see what works for you. On the whole, people agree that having some addons to help with healing makes the job that much smoother.
Reader UI of the Week: Uth's UI
Each week, WoW Insider brings you a fresh look at reader-submitted UIs as well as Addon Spotlight, which spotlights the latest user interface addons. Have a screenshot of your own UI that you'd like to submit? Send your screenshots, along with info on what mods you're using, to readerui@wow.com. Reader UI of the Week makes patch day fun! Unless it's one of those rolling restart types of patch day -- then you're just spamming your refresh key and running around in circles. Either way, I do hope you'll join us for a little user interface discussion. This week, I wanted to showcase Uth's UI, a non-assuming, simple affair that aims to be versatile as well as easy on the eyes. Much like last week, we have a player who alternates between two roles -- healing and DPS. The need for versatility forces many players to fashion their UIs into a catch-all configuration that easily morphs into the specified role at any given time. I like user interfaces that have a bit of bend.
Addon Spotlight: Addons for clickers
Addon Spotlight focuses on the backbone of the WoW gameplay experience: the user interface. Everything from bags to bars, buttons to DPS meters and beyond -- your addons folder will never be the same. This week, please don't berate the clickers too badly in the comments. Addon Spotlight strives to educate and empower, bringing you tips and tools to enrich your World of Warcraft experience. Playstyles are as varied as the addons that support them, and as a comprehensive writer, I try to cover everyone's specific setups. One playstyle that is a bit of a foreign concept to me is mouse clicking. Clickers are often derided and ridiculed for their point-and-click interaction with the user interface. Sometimes, you will be watching that YouTube video of a heroic kill, and the cursor is flying around the screen a lot more than you are used to. You've found the elusive clicker.
Addon Spotlight: Bati's Healer Grid layouts
Addon Spotlight focuses on the backbone of the WoW gameplay experience: the user interface. Everything from bags to bars, buttons to DPS meters and beyond -- your addons folder will never be the same. This week, Grid gets some pre-made loving thanks to Bati! Thursday is here! Thursday is here! Excitement abounds in my secret addon lair for many reasons. First, my original vanilla WoW character is back in action. Originally, as many of you have read in my past columns, priest was my class of choice. Healers tend to be my forte because of group desirability -- selfishly and selflessly, I always rolled healer to get invited to groups and be there to support the healerless masses back when this was a thing. After a stint in Warhammer Online, tanking became my new love and, after a quick respec and some forum threads, my Burning Crusade healadin became my Wrath tankadin. After almost three years in the freezer, my priest has emerged from cryo-stasis.
Reader UI of the Week: Stärs' UI
Each week, WoW.com brings you a fresh look at reader-submitted UIs. Have a screenshot of your UI you want to submit? Send your screenshots, along with info on what mods you're using, to readerui@wow.com. My condolences, again, to those of you stuck without your server of choice on this 24-hour patch day. The cataclysmic rewards for your patience, however, are without question! In the meantime, how about checking out some tips and tricks for user interface customization while you wait to play? This week, we dive into Stärs' user interface, a simple user interface that totally doesn't put the minimap in a corner. Stärs is looking for a little advice as well, which is great, because this week was supposed to be all about advice! Shall we?
The magical alchemy of mouseovers plus a Razer Naga
This article has been brought to you by Seed, the Aol guest writer program that brings your words to WoW.com. Healers have one of the more ambiguous roles in the World of Warcraft. DPS players mostly thrive by topping the damage meters, using the most optimal rotations, glyphs, etc. Tanks enjoy a form of tunnel vision where their task is ever so straightforward and clear. A healer, however, must keep watch on a whole group of individuals, react to their choices and keep the game itself from defeating them. The worst kind of healer will select one, two or possibly three go-to spells to spam often and early. This player will use healing meters as a measure of success and frequently use them to lay the blame on others when things don't work out. The best kind of healer uses a wide array of abilities at exactly the time required. He conserves mana, keeps everyone alive and even contributes to the raid's overall DPS when possible. The best kind of healer isn't simply the reason you lived; rather, they're the reason things went smoothly. Many healers rely on mods as they strive for this goal. Healbot, for example, creates a special frame for click-casting. It assigns certain spells to certain mouse buttons by default, making healing a breeze. The chief limitation of Healbot, however, is the link to physical buttons on a mouse and the lack of native support for more than five of them. Without keyboard mods, a Healbot healer is restricted to no more than five heals that are ready at a moment's notice. This player will also need a fair bit of practice to get beyond the defaults of "left click, little heal; right click, big heal." Memory plays a role, as Healbot does little to notify you visually of which keys do which action, especially once you've sized the bars down to the point that you can view the entire raid.
Addon Spotlight: Geist
Addon Spotlight focuses on the backbone of the WoW gameplay experience -- the user interface. Everything from bags to bars, buttons to DPS meters and beyond -- your addons folder will never be the same! This week, Geist haunts your action bars. Thursday can only mean one thing -- addons. Earlier in the week, Excellence's UI from Reader UI of the Week made prominent use of Geist, an incredibly useful addon that begged to be in the spotlight. Action bars are an important staple to the World of Warcraft user interface, and most addons in this category are all about changing the attributes of mostly static bars. Geist takes a different approach to action bars, potentially being a full action bar replacement or an augmentation onto existing action bar setups. Click now!
Reader UI of the Week: Crazyate's UI
Each week WoW.com brings you a fresh look at reader submitted UIs. Have a screenshot of your UI you want to submit? Send your screenshots, along with info on what mods you're using, to readerui@wow.com. Emergency! Get ready people, let's move, move, move! We're going to need to get the whole pit crew together as soon as possible. This week, reader Crazyates the paladin sent me a plea for help -- tips and tricks to get his UI on course. He's playing on a laptop, so this week's installment of Reader UI of the Week could be very helpful to the small-screen crowd. We've got a lot of work to do! Release the kraken!
15 Minutes of Fame: Master of add-ons
15 Minutes of Fame is WoW.com's look at World of Warcraft players of all shapes and sizes -- from the renowned to the relatively anonymous, from the remarkable to the player next door. Tip us off to players you'd like to hear more about. If James Whitehead II knocked on my door right now, I might not recognize him -- but once I realized who he was, I'd throw my arms around his neck in gleeful gratitude. You see, Jim is the brains behind Clique, the popular click-casting add-on that's saved the aching fingers of healers across the globe. (That's worth a little gleeful gratitude, yes sir. And probably a little foot-washing and maybe even a little toe-sucking, too, truth be told. Not to descend into TMI right here in the intro or anything. Ahem.) He's also the creator of mods like PerfectRaid and TomTom and the author of Hacking World of Warcraft and World of Warcraft Programming: A Guide and Reference for Creating WoW Add-ons, now going into its second edition. He's working on a Ph.D. at Oxford University. He rows competitively, he mods, he knits and crochets, he raids ... Ok, ok, let's invite him in for a chat, shall we? Meanwhile, be sure to enter to win our giveaway of six copies of the new, updated edition of World of Warcraft Programming.
The Queue: Easy heroics and reverse DPS
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW Insider's daily Q&A column where the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft.Another day, another Q&A! Now, without delay, let's get to the questions.Ven asked... In looking at badge rewards, a couple guildies and I noticed that there are more rewards and item types available for 25-man badges than for 10-man badges. Is this intended? Are the heroic and 10-man level badges relegated to stacking endlessly once you have the two or three pieces of gear you need from them? Or is Blizz planning on adding more gear soon? Compared to BC badge gear, there is very little available.
Forum post of the day: Cliques aren't just for high school anymore
I was under the impression that the purpose of a guild is to have a group of folks that you enjoy playing with and have common goals. It's a good way to share the game with friends and family, in addition to experiencing new adventures and progressing together. Triamala of Blackwater Raiders fears that such actions are seen as cliquish, causing drama amongst the ranks. In a post in the Guild Relations forum she said that a previous guild of hers feel apart because of cliques and her current guild is facing the same fate. Members of her guild apparently get up in arms if she runs instances together with her husband or other friends. In a later post she admits that she is closer to the officers than other guild members because they've been playing together for quite some time.
Fixing addons and macros after 2.2
The patch hit on Tuesday morning, and Tuesday afternoon, I began my usual cycle of addon laziness-- instead of actually updating my addons, I just checked "load out-of-date addons" setting myself up for trouble down the road, I'm sure.But while I'll be having addon problems for a while (at least until the next patch-- I'll probably finally fix everything right before 2.3 breaks them all again), you don't need to. Kaydeethree has put together a terrific guide to fixing your addons after 2.2, with links to addons that have updated, addons that haven't updated, and a few great tips on how to update your macros as well.It seems like KD3 is keeping an eye on addons as they update as well, so the thread will probably be updated accordingly. If, unlike me, you're motivated enough to keep your addons as up to date as possible (so that they all, y'know, actually work instead of throwing error messages at you every few seconds), then KD3's guide should help.
The Creamy GUI Center: Click casting
Each week Matthew Porter contributes The Creamy GUI Center, a column aimed at helping you enhance your WoW experience by offering an in depth guide to addons, macros and other tools we use to play WoW, along with commentary on issues that affect how we all play.First off thank you for the feedback and encouragement I received from last week's column, I really appreciate it. I wanted to take a minute to discuss my background and the scope of The Creamy GUI Center so that people know what to expect. I'm a player of WoW just like you who happens to have a great interest in graphical user interfaces (GUIs, pronounced "gooey"), particularly when it comes to games. I was born with a disfiguring disability and my curiosity in UIs grew as I became more adept at computers and gaming. I found that a customizable interface like the one found in WoW goes a long way in allowing everyone the ability to play through a tailor made experience, within the guidelines setup by Blizzard of course. While our individual challenges and goals may be different, it is my hope through this column to share the tools and addons that helped me so that your WoW experience is the best possible. While the main focus of my column is addons, I intend to cover macros, and other tools ranging from Team Speak to game pads; as well as commentary on topics affecting how we play such as the decursive nerf. However I am hardly perfect and I am just one guy, so if I left something out or miss communicated (sorry Ace guys, I now know it's not an acronym) please send me feedback. (Or if you think I'm doing a good job too!) I hope this helps you get a better understand on what to expect. I thank you for reading and WoW Insider's editors for taking a chance on me. Without further to-do let's get to today's topic, click casting!
Return of the addons to Azeroth
My guild headed back to raiding last night (seems a lot of guilds are taking a vacation lately, with the patch and the expansion giving a one-two punch to the PVE game), and while BWL wasn't quite ready for us-- the Razorgore orb was bugged, and our MT couldn't see a pet bar for him-- we finally got back in the groove in MC. We'd been at a loss with new specs and a lack of our usual mods, but tonight, with various means and instruments, we were able to finally down some of our old farm targets and pick up some epic gear.Decursive, as I said last week, was the big one. Apparently it was number one on the devs' hitlist, and for good reason, because it definitely took a lot of work out of cleansing decurses (like the one Lucifron throws out). But we've found alternatives that are "good enough." One of our mages now swears by Grid, an addon that works with 2.0.1 (I haven't tried it, but it comes highly recommended). And even more people benefited from this macro, posted in the Forums. It seems that if you create a macro that says "/cast [target=mouseover] Remove Lesser Magic" (or whatever decursing spell you want to use), you can then run your mouse over players or their raid icons while spamming the macro button, and you've got a reasonable facsimile of what Decursive used to do. In fact, this is even better-- Shaman (like myself) can create a mouseover Purge macro, run your mouse across a group of enemies in PVP while spamming the button, and never have to put up with a buff or renew spell ever again.Speaking of my Shaman, when I asked for help last week, you all gracefully answered. I was extremely frustrated with the changes to addons (I lived by all the extra info redHeart gave me), but when I finally tried out and used Clique, I finally felt back at home. It's simple to set up and use, and makes things almost as easy as they were pre-2.0 (the author even has a video up showing how simple it is to use). Finally, the brand new version of CTRaid, 1.621 (I think that's the third version they've released since the patch) finally gets rid of that extremely annoying "clicking" noise the patch added to raids. A few things are still bugged in a few raid instances, but finally, raiding is getting back to normal.
