Table of Contents
BrRaidFrames is the RDX addon that I have created for myself, my guild, and the RDX community. It has just about everything you would need in a raid healing mod with of course the addition of the core rdx elements that make it unique. Whether you use sRaidFrames, PerfectRaid, or Grid, it has layouts that are similar so you don't have to get used to anything new.
Using your favorite extraction utility, extract the contents of the zip file into the addons folder.
Note
If you are upgrading from a previous release, make sure you fully delete all of the RDX folders before extraction.
When you first start the game with Brethren RaidFrames installed you will be prompted with the RDX Installer. Different options will be shown depending on whether or not you are upgrading from a pre-30 release or installing fresh.
If you are installing Brethren RaidFrames for the first time you will see the following window.
Make sure Install Brethren Raid Frames is checked and hit OK. Doing so will bring up the following window.
For this window, select whether or not you want your main tank window to show the tank's target and targettarget or to show the tank only. Hitting OK will reload the UI.
If you are upgrading your old install of Brethren RaidFrames you will see this as the second screen.
Since you are upgrading this window provides a method of migrating you old desktops and bindings to the current character if desired. You will see this window on all of your characters when they first log in.
After your UI has been reloaded you will be presented with the Getting Started Wizard. We will now walk though the wizard and look into what each option means starting with the second page.
You will select the Raid Template in this step. When you click a template in the window, the template will change on the screen as well. To learn more see Raid Template
In this step you will select the look of the health bars. Clicking on a frame style in this window will show a real time preview in the preview box. To learn more see Frame Settings.
Setting up mouse bindings is highly recommended, just click the Setup Bindings button to open the following window.
Through this window you can assign mouse buttons 1-5 with ctrl, shift, and alt modifiers to any spell, macro, or other misc function. For more on this window please see: Character Bindings
Note
This step is optional, after the wizard is complete your windows will be fully operational.
While the window positions of the default templates give you a good idea of what they have to offer. These positions are probably not practical for raid use and will require some adjustment. To move a window you must shift click on the title bar and drag. You can un dock and access the layout menu by right clicking on the window's title bar.
You can edit the scale, alpha, anchor point, and various other layout options via the layout properties window.
Once you have all of your windows in place you are done. Further configuration can be done via the Brethren RaidFrames Options window, and various other RDX configuration editing tools. Please refer to the main documentation for more info.
By default RDX switches desktops based on if you are in a raid, group, solo, in a battleground, or in a inn/city. If for any reason you need to switch the desktop manually, use the quick desktop button.
In Brethren RaidFrames, Raid Templates and Frame Styles dictate how players are organized and shown to the user (you). Raid Templates are how players are grouped together. Where as Frame Styles are how the individual players are displayed.
Rain Templates dictate how players are grouped together on the screen. Each Raid Template has its own intended purpose and layout, I will go over each of the predefined templates.
This template sorted players based on their role in the raid. Players are placed into the following roles: Healers, Ranged DPS, Melee DPS, Tanks, and your party. There are 5 windows in this template by default. This style is useful if you are in charge of healing a specific role or you would just like to have it separated for logistical reasons. All windows can be un docked and moved around as desired.
Note
To learn how to add and remove people from the different roles, see Player Roles
This template splits players into their respective group's window. This template is probably the most used template for obvious reasons. All windows can be un docked and moved around as desired. Groups 1-5 are shown by default.
This template shows the whole raid in a single window. The window grows vertically and then horizontally with a max of 5 rows. This was primarily made for users who use the grid Frame Style.
Note
The window looks at the raid as a whole, if there are 3 people in group 1, players from group 2 will fill in the last 2 rows of the fist column.
Frame Styles are how each individual player is viewed by you. They are the bread and butter of any raid healing mod so a lot of time and effort has been put into these styles to provide the information you need, give familiarity to those who are new to RDX, and to try and set them above the rest with special features such as hot bars, boss bars/highlights, and the mini dispel grid. You can change many aspects of these styles with the Frame Settings window. I will go over each of the five Frame Styles.
The default style is the only style to support the mini dispel grid and is my personal preferred style. The boss debuff bas is displayed along the top, hots along the bottom. Buffs hidden by default.
Designed to help people migrate over to RDX this frame is a decent clone of the sRaidFrames style. The boss debuff bar runs along the top and the hot bar runs right below the name. Show buffs if no debuffs is default for this frame.
Designed to help people migrate over to RDX this frame is a decent clone of the perfectRaid style, though the ability to move the name to the right has not yet been implemented. The boss debuff bar is displayed along the top and the hot bar runs along the bottom.
Designed to help people migrate over to RDX this frame is a decent clone of the grid style It even has the four corner boxes that light up for various reasons. The healthbar moves up and down, and the name will turn into the amount of missing health once the player has lost 15% of their life. The outline of the box will turn white if the player is in need of healing (< 70% life). The outline will also change color for agro(red) and various other colors for spell debuffs. The outline will only change to a spell debuff color if you can dispel it. The boss debuff bar is along the top and the hot bar is along the bottom. The four corners are as follows:
- Top Left
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Turns red if the player has Agro.
- Top Right
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Turns gold if the player has pom.
- Bottom Left
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Turns green if someone is casting a heal on this person.
- Bottom Right
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Turns dark green if there is a hot on this person.
All configuration options can be access via the RDX system menu. From the options drop down you can easily change the following features:
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Raid Templates
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Main Tank window type
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Character bindings
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Player roles
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Frame settings
Note
If you have the Raid Desktop active you must perform these changes out-of-combat.
To change the active Raid Template goto and select the Raid Template you would like to use.
To reset the active Raid Template goto and select the Raid Template you would like to reset. The template will be reset to it's default state and all changes you had made to the template will be lost.
To edit the mouse bindings for your character goto . This will bring up the Mouse Bindings editor.
By default there is only one binding defined, and that is target a player using left click. To add a new binding hit the new binding button. This window will appear:
Select button combinations you would like for this new binding and hit ok. You will be directed back to the first screen but there will now be a new binding listed. To change that button's assignment his the Action type drop down, you will get the following options:
- Cast Spell on Unit
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Casts selected spell on the player when executed. Target does not change.
- Set Unit Focus
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Sets your focus to player / enemy when executed.
- Open Unit Menu
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Opens the "right click menu" when executed.
- Execute Macro Text
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Executes a RDX macro object when executed. RDX Macro objects are the same as regular macros, just not stored in /macro.
- Assist Unit
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Assists a player when executed.
- Target and Cast
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Targets the player / enemy and then casts the selected spell when executed.
- Target Unit
-
Targets the player / enemy when executed
- Nothing
-
yup.
To define player roles, goto . A window will pop up listing all of the different player roles.
When you click on a role it will bring up the NomSet editor.
Simply enter the name of the character you would like to assign to this role and hit enter. Close the window when you are done. Changes to the sorted template will appear automatically.
To open the Frame Settings window goto . The following window will appear.
This window is the core of the addon and is probably why you will be using this oobe over any other. Settings will take effect only after you hit . You must be out-of-combat for to work.
These two settings will determine which UnitFrame you will be using. Select frame is obvious, it selects the style of frame you wish to use, many settings are bound to the frame type for convenience. There are three UnitFrame Options, not all frames offer all of these options.
- Display Predictive health
-
This option will show a secondary health bar behind the main health bar that represents the predicted health of a player after heals have been finished. It will also show the value of the incoming heals to be added where the health text is displayed based on the specific Health Text Format you select.
- Display Mana Bars
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This option will add a mana bar to the frame. For non mana users there will just be a blank space.
- Display Mini Dispel Grid
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This option will display a box beside each player that can be used to dispel the player if they receive a debuff that can be dispelled by you. The box will light up with the appropriate color of the debuff. You will be able to left click or right click on the box depending on the debuff type to dispel it.
Both of these sections are very intuitive, I will only be explaining Color Options. There are there settings for Colors Options:
- Static Green
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The health bar will be green and will stay green regardless of a players health.
- Green -> Red
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The health bar will start out green and transform to red the close the player gets to zero.
- Class Color
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The health bar will be the color of the player's class and will stay that color regardless of health.
- User Defined
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You pick the two colors for the health bar.
Regardless of which setting you pick you will still be able to edit Background Color, Primary Highlight Color, Secondary Highlight Color, and Has your Hot Color. To clarify what primary and secondary highlight colors are for I will use Bloodboil as an example. Primary Highlight Color will cover the health bar if the player receives fixate. The secondary Highlight Color will cover the health bar if a player receives bloodboil.
There are various settings in this section that dictate how things are shown, here is a rundown of each of them.
- Druid Heal-Over-Time
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Sense you may only track one HOT at a time, druids much pick which HOT they want to track. If the druild selects Lifebloom the hot count will reflect the number of stacks on that person rather than the total number of hots.
- Priest Tracking
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With the addition of grace in 3.0 you now have the option to either monitor HOTs or Grace. If the priest selects Grace the hot count will reflect the number of stacks on that person and the hot bar will represent the time left on grace rather than renew.
- Health Text Format
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Determines the way health is formatted for each player. This setting is saved for each frame. The grid frames use their own format and thus this option will be hidden when a grid frame is selected. Here are the different formats you may choose from.
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CurrentHp(+predictedHp) / MaxHp
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+predicted –MissingHp
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-MissingHp(+predicted) / MaxHp
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+predicted CurrentHp
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+predicted% CurrentHp%
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No Text
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- Health Bar Texture
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You may change the texture of the health bar using this button. When clicked it will bring up the RDX texture browser. RDX supports LibSharedMedia, HAL textures are also included with BrRaidFrames.
- Out-of-Range Transparency
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This option sets the alpha / transparency of a players health bar when they are out of healing range. When set to 1.0 the transparency will never change. When set to 0.0 the health bar will fully disappear when they run out of range.
- Text Drop Shadows
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Adds/removes drop shadows from the various text elements of the selected frame.
- Replace group number with HOT count
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When this is enabled, rather than showing the group number, it will show how many HOT's are on that player. If you are a druid and select lifebloom it will display the number of lifebloom stacks (your lifebloom stacks only).
- Display HOT timer bars
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When this is enabled there will be bar embedded in the players frame that represents the time left of your hot in that player. If you are a druid, only the selected hot will show up with a bar. <insert example screen>
- Display Window Title bars
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The option shows/hides the title bar of the windows you have open.
Brethren RaidFrames contains various special features that will help you do your job that much better. Here are a few of the features that will greatly help you in your role.
Since around 2.3 BrRaidFrames has been able to track HOTs from all the healing classes. By default the total number of HOTs on a player will be shown on the unit frame. In addition to the number, if one of your HOTs is on the player then the number of HOTs would change color and you will get a timer bar the represents the amount of time left for that hot. For druids, since they have more than one HOT have the ability to select which HOT they wish to track(timer bar) via the Frame Settings menu.
In release 30 three new additions to this feature have been added. The first being the ability to monitor your lifebloom stacks rather than the total number of hots on a player. All you have to do is select lifebloom to be tracked and you will see your lifebloom stacks. The second is the ability to monitor grace on players. If a priest decides to track grace then they will see the number of stacks for grace as well as a timer bar for each player. The third is the ability to monitor Weakened Soul on players if you are disc speced. A red border will represent the time left on Weakened Soul. This will be very helpful for disc priests who must maintain shield rotations on tanks.
For bosses that have important debuffs to be wary about, BrRaidFrames will highlight those players that are effected and place a red timer bar along the top representing the time left on that debuff. In the figure above, phayte and succysuccy are both under the effect of the curse in the kalegos fight. This is helpful for both decursers and healers due to the nature of the curse. In addition to debuff highlights BrRaidFrames comes with a series of different boss specific windows that are aimed to assist in the execution of the fight.
The window above was designed to help our decursers on the Kalegos fight. Player are highlighted blue when in the spectral realm. The blue bar / time represents the time left in the spectral realm. The purple bar / text represents how much time is left on the curse. There are various boss specific windows for different encounters, more will be added when the need arises.
The missing buffs window shows how many people are missing the various castable raid buffs. When you click on an icon it brings up a more detailed window that shows who all is missing that specific buff.
When left clicking on a player in this window (if you are a priest in this case) it will cast a single fort on that person. If you right click on a player it will cast prayer of fort. These windows make buffing extremely fast. Thought in 3.0 it is not something we really have to worry about since prayer will be raid wide.
This section covers a few basics of RDX such as the main menu, the window list, and the explorer.
This is the main menu of RDX, you use it to access everything RDX related. Here is an explanation of what each button does.
- Play / Stop (
) -
Starts / stops the active boss mod / timer.
- RDX Explorer (
) -
Opens the RDX Explorer, the heart of
- Sync (
) -
Syncs data with others in the raid.
- Window (
) -
Left click: open quick desktop menu. Right click: open Window List.
- Lock / Unlock (
) -
Locks / Unlocks windows in RDX. BrRaidFrames does not support this feature due to the way things are displayed while unlocked.
- Crosshair Tool (
) -
The crosshair tool is used to edit thing that do not have titlebars. Simply drag the crosshair to the window you wish to edit and the right click menu will appear.
- Broadcast (
) -
If the current boss mod has the ability to broadcast info to the raid, it will do so if this option is enabled.
- Hide (
) -
Replaces the main menu with a minimap icon. Clicking the minimap icon will bring the main menu back up.
- Options Menu (
) -
The options menu contains every option that rdx provides (including the BrRaidFrame options). You will use this button often.
When you left click on the window button the quick desktops drop down appears. To switch to a desktop left click on it. To remove a desktop from the quick desktop list, right click on it.
The Window List contains a list of all the windows currently in RDX. You use the Window List to open and close windows easily. Windows that are highlighted green are currently open. To open or close a window simply click on it's name.
All data in RDX is stored like files on your computer. You use the RDX Explorer to navigate though the data just like you would in windows. On the left is the packages list( they are like folders). On the right are the contents of the packages. By default all of the editing options are disabled. You can enable them by turning on developer mode in the options menu. Be careful when editing some of these objects, it can be easy to mess up the installation if you delete something by accident.