Essential Addons: TellMeWhen

by Tachyon on Wed. 31. March 2010, 13:11

Filed under: addons, proc, buff, debuff, cooldown, tellmewhen, arcane, featured

Monitoring your AB stack, MBarr procs and cooldowns of your offensive and defensive abilities is crucial to optimize your performance, especially as an arcane mage.

If you just use normal buff/debuff bar addons (e.g. Elkano's Buff Bars) and cooldown monitor addons (e.g. CooldownTimers3), it's hard to make up specific buffs or debuffs, even more so if you're in a raid environment where you usually have 20+ buffs at a time on you.

But don't despair, there's an Addon out there that does exactly what YOU need.

TellMeWhen is an addon that adds a set of bars to your UI, where each slot can be configured to show a buff, debuff or cooldown, when active, inactive or always, with an optional timer.
I just love this generic approach, as the opportunities are unbounded, and if properly configured it serves all the information you need to use your abilities at the right time.



Before you start using it, make a concept of which things you'd like to have displayed in which bar. The bars can be individually scaled and moved, and in the latest versions of the addon they're dual spec aware (you can define which bars get displayed with each spec). My concept for the bars is as follows:

• Bar1: Cooldowns for my most essential offensive and defensive abilities.
• Bar2: Arcane Casting, showing the Arcane Blast debuff stack and Missile Barrage procs
• Bar3: Powerups, showing active damage boost buffs and procs
• Bar4: Target debuffs, such as Slow, Frostbolt snare, Frostbite, Living Bomb etc.

Setting up TellMeWhen

After downloading and installing TellMeWhen, go to ESC -> Interface -> Addons -> TellMeWhen. In these interface options, you can customize the number of bars, how many rows and columns they have and in which spec they're active.
Unlocking the bars will show all bars on the UI and allow you to customize them by right-clicking on a slot in the bar and configuring what cooldown, buff or debuff you would like to have displayed there. Note that in the latest versions, you have to check the 'enable icon' option for each slot for it to become active.

Here's a few hints on stuff you may want to display as an arcane mage:

BUFFS/PROCS:

• Arcane Blast: Debuff, Player, When present, Timer
• Missile Barrage: Buff, Player, When present, Timer
• Arcane Power: Buff, Player, When present, Timer
• Icy Veins: Buff, Player, When present, Timer
• Pushing the Limit: Buff, Player, When present, Timer (Tier 10 set 2p bonus)
• Quad Core: Buff, Player, When present, Timer (Tier 10 set 4p bonus)
• Surge of Power: Buff, Player, When present, Timer (Dislodged Foreign Object)
• Frostforged Sage: Buff, Player, When present, Timer (ICC revered/exalted Ring)
• Black Magic, Debuff: Buff, When present, Timer (Weapon Enchant)

TARGET DEBUFFS:

• Slow: Debuff, Target, When present, Timer
• Frostbolt: Debuff, Target, When present, Timer (for frost mages or pvp spec)
• Frostbite: Debuff, Target, When present, Timer (for frost mages or pvp spec)
• Living Bomb: Debuff, Target, When present, Timer, only if cast by self (for fire mages)

COOLDOWNS:

• (Name of 'on-use' Trinket): Cooldown, Item, Always, Timer
• Arcane Power: Cooldown, Spell or Ability, When usable, Timer
• Icy Veins: Cooldown, Spell or Ability, When usable, Timer
• Presence of Mind: Cooldown, Spell or Ability, When usable, Timer
• Ice Block: Cooldown, Spell or Ability, When usable, Timer
• Frost Nova: Cooldown, Spell or Ability, When usable, Timer
• Mirror Image: Cooldown, Spell or Ability, When usable, Timer
• Counterspell: Cooldown, Spell or Ability, When usable, Timer
• Blink: Cooldown, Spell or Ability, When usable, Timer
• Evocation: Cooldown, Spell or Ability, Always, Timer
• Mana Sapphire: Cooldown, Item, Always, Timer

If you use a non-english client, you have to use the localized names for the buffs, spells, items and abilities (e.g. 'Eisige Adern' for 'Icy Veins' in german clients). When in doubt, check your combat log or buff bar to find out which names the buffs have.

Once you configured the bars, unlock them in the addon settings so they become active. Don't forget to test if they work before heading into combat

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