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Boss Tactics is an a phenomenal tool to make your raid run more smoothly. What it does is allows synchronized graphical walk through of boss encounters. “Huh” I hear you ask? Boss Tactics let’s you and everyone in your raid to see the same thing at the same time for the strategy for the encounter. The addon is laid out in a very clear and concise manner: instance selection and bosses are at the top followed by custom text options and details about trash. Looking down to the left is where the heart if the addon lies, in a screenshot section where movable pins are located. The raid leader (or raid assistants) have control of these pins. But that’s just the beginning, not only is every pin move broadcasted to the raid keeping everyone in sync, you can also ping and draw on this screenshot section. If you need to illustrate a complex maneuver it’s extremely simple and intuitive to do.

Continuing down from the tactics space is the raid management tools. These are both for integral functions of the addon itself, as well as more generic raid functions such as automatic promotion of raid assistants. Other buttons in this section are for starting and synchronizing the boss tactics sessions and the tactics mode- more on this later.

The right hand half of the addon is dominated by the text description of the encounter, again the text is customizable. If the text has changed on the raid leaders version, the addon will send the appropriate changes to the raid.

For raid assistants there is also a raid leader’s chat channel built into the addon on the right hand side. The addon also automatically generates chat channels for your heals, dps and tanks, although these are accessed via slash commands.

There is also has a special “Tactics Mode” to allow raid leaders to prepare and modify the default strategies that come as standard without having to be in a raid to prepare. All in all Boss Tactics is a great little tool to help you wipe less.

Below are two walk though videos that the BossTactics  author Sorontur made for raid leaders.

You can download Boss Tactics here but make sure you download the individual instance modules.

The first one is auto track. It’s a fairly simple addon that changes your tracking type according to your target. This isn’t so important since improved tracking was changed to benefit you as long as you are tracking any type of target, but it is useful if you are gathering. You don’t have to worry about flipping your tracking if you get attacked.

The next addon is AntiDaze, which is perfect if you are a bit forgetful or get distracted after a wipe and forget to turn off aspect of the pack. AntiDaze will automatically cancel AotP if it detects the dazed debuff on anyone in the raid. AntiDaze can also be setup to work with pets by using the slash command “/ad”.

A word of warning on AntiDaze, the addon can take a moment to catch up and turn off aspect of the pack if it is on other players. This seems to be latency dependent.

The third and final addon this week is align. This is designed for those who like a nice clean and symmetrical (or at the least even) interface. “/align” brings up the grid

The Align Addon in action

Well that wraps it up for this week. Next fortnight I’ll be starting on a series about bar mods, so leave your favorite in the comments for this post and I’ll be sure to look into it.

-Faeghleis

Hi, I’m Faeghleis and I’ll be writing to you about the addons and macros I use as a hunter, feral druid [ed: Whoa, what?], and raid leader as well as other more general -or in some cases pointless- addons.

Today, I’ll be going over a little addon that has been floating around for a while. It doesn’t add any real functionality, nor does is provide any useful information about anything you are doing. It more fits into an entertainment category of mod. I am of course talking about petemote. This little gem gives your pet life: it gives your pet personality, and it makes being a hunter just plain fun! You’ll get more questions during raids and battlegrounds like “How did you get your pet to do that?” than “Cool Pet where did you get him?” about a new spirit beast.

Petemote allows you to make custom emotes on the fly by using the /pet [insert emote here] command. You can also get your pet to do a random emote from its file buy using the /pet random command. For those who are into deep addon customization, you can edit the .lua file and add more emotes to the code so your pet can have even more personality. For those interested the author has a guide on how to edit the .lua here. Other functions are sparse, but an important one is a line of code that seems to be in there more for your raid leader: the ability to toggle random emotes off using /pet random [on/off].

For the role players out there, this could be the perfect addon for you. For everyone, however, Petemote is the most fun you can have with an addon that does nothing other then bug your raid leader and entertain your friends or those waiting for a boat.

I’ll be back soon with more addons for you to enjoy!

-Faeghleis