To Grid or Not to Grid. . .

Sylly just recently became a Grid convert and Keeva has been working on an indepth comparison of Healbot and Grid.  I have been following Keeva’s research with some interest, as every 6 months or so I read something about how fabulous Grid is, and get it in my head that I must give it another go.  Truth be told, I have actually installed Grid into my UI no fewer than 6 times from when it was introduced back in Vanilla WoW to now, and everytime I have installed it I struggle through the set up, get frustrated, swear…a lot, and then play with it for a few days.  Every. Single. Time. I have hated it and uninstalled it going back to my original set up. 

So after reading what Keeva has to say, and what Syll had to say, the bug is in my brain again that I should give Grid another go…but I keep thinking back to all those other times I’ve done just that, and am wondering if the results will be any different this time.  I think I have a fairly clean UI (seen after the break), so I’m wondering, if it ain’t broke… 

What do you think?

Here is Beruthiel’s UI.

Here is Dannie’s UI.

I use the following mods for raiding in my UI:

• X-Perl – I am in a 10 man raid in both of these scree shots, but I think you can get a feel for where my life bars are located.
• Clique – this is not a mod that can be seen, but is one that I find invaluable for healing, letting me bind my heals to my mouse.  You may notice that I have zero heals on my paladin’s toolbar, and this is what lets me do that!
• Violation – I use this as an alternative to Recount.  It is a very lightweight damage meter, and while it doesn’t provide near the information that Recount does, it is currently the only meter out there showing effective healing (why Recount can’t frigging do this is beyond me).  Brade runs Recount so I am able to get all the recount information I want from his meter.
• HoT Candy (druid only) – You can see this mod working on the right hand side of my screen.  It tracks my HoTs lining them up for me with those expiring the earliest at the top, and those with the most time at the bottom.
• Pally Power (paladin only) – You can see this mod working on the right hand of my screen.  It let’s me set blessings and track the time left on those buffs and who is missing them.  The only thing that I do not like about this mod is that it often acts oddly during combat, not letting be buff someone whose buff has dropped for whatever reason.  This means that I still have to keep my blessings on my toolbars, which is mildly annoying.
• Raid Cooldowns and Raid Cooldown Display – Because I lead raids, it’s important for me to know who has what cool downs.  This is a lightweight, simple mod, that is invaluable.  This tracks who uses what abilities and how long is left before that person can use them again (think battle rez, bloodlust, etc.).  You are able to set which abilities that you want to track.  The only downside is that everyone in your raid must be running either oRA2 or Raid Cooldowns (which is a requirement for our raids).
• oRA2 – This is a raiding requirement for our guild, and is basically a “big brother” type tool for raid leaders (that’s right!  I’m in your bags looking at your stuffs!).  It lets me set tank targets for everyone, find out who didn’t bring mana potions, see who hasn’t repaired, check resists, etc.
• MiK’s Scrolling Combat Text – a highly customizable alternative to SCT or the default combat text in the Blizzard UI
• Utopia – This is another mod that I use as a raid leader, that I probably wouldn’t otherwise.  It is similar to Deamon from TBC, and tracks debuffs on a mob.  You don’t see it in any of my snapshots because I’m not targetting anything.
• Quartz – This is what I use for my casting bar, and I am of the opinion that it is the best mod of it’s kind.
• Omen – This is another required mod for us, and is a threat meter.  I tuck mine away while I’m healing, but still continue to run it.  I know that I generate a fair bit of threat on my druid, so it is handy to have.
• Deadly Boss Mods – We require all of our raiders to have this as well, and it is a boss mod tool that has a variety of functions during boss encounters.
• Loggerhead – This is another handy, but not seen, mod that I use.  This mod automatically starts logging for me when we enter certain zones so that I can upload our combat log into WWS.  It’s nice because it’s just one less thing I have to remember to do when getting a raid underway.
• Bartender 4 – This lets me customize my bars/buttons.
• Mini Map Button Frame – This lets me put all of those annoying mini map buttons into one button, and really cleans up my mini map!