Why is a raven like a writing desk?
The Mad Hatter hadn’t the slightest idea and neither do I. I do, however, have some excellent ideas why you should be using Raven as your buff mod.
Buffs and Debuffs
If you’ve been using Satrina Buff Frames, you’ll feel right at home with what Raven can do. You can break buffs up by duration, and show short-term ones in a different frame from long-term ones. You can show them as bars or as icons. Raven’s bar group positioning controls are excellent. Groups can be positioned relative to each other. Empty bar groups don’t take up space if you don’t want them to.
Here’s how I display buffs & debuffs on the player:
Different frames for different targets
Raven can show different buff frames for friendly and unfriendly targets. It can also show & hide frames when you enter and exit combat. I have it set up to show me practically everything a friendly target when I’m out of combat. For example:
And here’s what I show for an enemy target in-combat:
Notifications
Notification is a traditional use for PowerAuras or WeakAuras. TellMeWhen also does notifications, with icons instead of textures. Raven works a bit more like WeakAuras than like the others. It lets you set up conditionals that trigger the display of bars or icons when the condition becomes true, or when it becomes false. I use this feature for two purposes: quiet reminders that cooldowns are now available, and in-my-face notifications that I should do something right then.
For instance, I have an “Innervate Now” conditional. It triggers if 1) I’m in my resto spec, 2) I’m in combat, 3) my mana is below 80%, and 4) Innervate is available for use. It shows the Innervate icon in the middle of my screen and plays a notification sound. I have similar notifications for Lifeblood & my two-minute trinkets. The reminders help me wring the most from my gear and abilities by helping me keep them on cooldown.
I use a similar setup for tanking cooldowns. Here’s what my death knight sees when he’s in combat:
Two mods in one!
Raven replaced both WeakAuras & Satrina Buff Frames in my mod set. I liked being able to run fewer mods, while still getting an insane amount of control over the information displayed on my screen. I particularly liked being able to change the information shown when I’m in combat: paring that down to essential information helps me avoid overload during stressful moments. I did have to spend several hours setting this up, but the payoff is worth the time. If you don’t want to spend a long time, Raven has some easy set-up options. Single button clicks will get you useful frames like long-term player buffs and debuffs.
