Interface
A good UI helps you make the right decisions in the middle of a fight, without forcing you to think about the UI itself. What that looks like will always be personal, but the goal is the same for everyone: show only what matters right now and remove everything that doesn’t. Too much information quickly becomes noise, especially during hectic pulls. The cleaner and more focused your UI is, the easier it is to play consistently.
When building my UI, I follow three core principles.
- Minimalism (signal only): If a piece of information won’t change my next cast or decision, I don’t need to see it. Anything low-impact or redundant stays hidden.
- Frames first: As a healer, my eyes live on the raid frames. That means the information I need within milliseconds sits right next to them. High-priority cooldowns, procs, and buffs are close, while long cooldowns and low-urgency information are placed further away to reduce eye movement and speed up decision-making.
- Zoned layout: Abilities are grouped by purpose. Single-target heals and externals are together, core healing tools and throughput cooldowns form another zone, and DPS tools, defensives, and raid cooldowns each have their own space. One quick glance at a zone tells me exactly what options I have.
With Midnight, Blizzard has made a big push to improve the base UI and reduce reliance on addons. We now have:
- A built-in damage meter
- A much more flexible cooldown manager for the center HUD
- Improved nameplates
- A native boss ability timeline
Party and raid frames have also seen major improvements in both clarity and customization. Overall, Blizzard has done a genuinely good job, and there’s nothing wrong with using the default tools exclusively.
To get the most out of the default UI, you should still configure it so it shows the right information at the right time.
- In your damage meter, open a tab with Deaths so you can quickly see what someone died to and learn from it for the next time you get there.
- Sound cues are also very useful. You can assign a short sound to important cooldowns like your dispel so you do not have to keep an eye on its cooldown.
- Set up your Cooldown Manager to show important buffs, like Primacy and Essence Burst.
- Customize your boss timeline so it is easy for you to read. You will look at it a lot to plan your healing around incoming mechanics, and a clear timeline makes that planning much easier.
Addons can still add value, but their role has changed. They’re less about gaining a massive advantage and more about fine-tuning, readability, and personal preference. Below is a list of addons I recommend if you want to push your UI a bit further.
Recommended Addons
Raid Frames: I prefer using addons for raid frames to have more control over what information is shown and how it’s displayed. Grid2 is my main recommendation since it offers very deep customization while still being reasonably easy to get into. Cell is another popular option that’s a bit quicker to set up and get into and also offers plenty of customization.
Nameplates: There are several good nameplate addons, but Plater is by far the most widely used. It offers extremely deep customization and also lets you import profiles from other players, making it easy to get a good setup without building everything from scratch. A newer option worth mentioning is Platynator, which is also very solid and shows a lot of promise.
Cooldown Manager: Cooldown manager addons can be helpful once you run into the limits of Blizzard’s default system. While the built-in cooldown manager is a good baseline, it’s restricted in layout and flexibility, which makes it hard to tailor information to your personal playstyle. Addons like BetterCooldownManager or Arc UI give you much more control by allowing additional bars, custom groupings, clearer visuals, and alternative ways of displaying cooldowns, resources, and items.
Boss Timeline: Blizzard now provides a built-in boss timeline that shows upcoming abilities, which is extremely helpful for planning your healing. Knowing what mechanic is coming next and when it happens makes it much easier to prepare cooldowns and positioning. The two addons BigWigs and DBM build on this by adding more customization options.
Method Raid Tools: This addon allows you to see custom notes and other helpful stuff. If your guild sets up healer notes for CD’s this is a way to import them and make them show on your UI.
M+ Timer: I recommend WarpDeplete. It’s a customizable Mythic+ timer that lets you tailor the look of your dungeon timer while still showing all the essential info like time, enemy forces, and deaths, and it fits especially well into clean, modern, minimalist WoW UIs.
Camera control: I recommend DynamicCam because it lets me slightly shift the camera upward, so I see more of what’s happening in front of my character. That gives me more usable screen space at the top, a clearer overview of the fight, and makes stacked nameplates much easier to read, especially in busy Mythic+ pulls or raids.
An example UI can look something like this, with a clean layout and focus on readability during combat. All the important addon profiles I use, including Grid2 and my cooldown manager setup, are available on my Twitch at https://www.twitch.tv/cryve.
Macros
Macros are one of the most underrated tools in WoW. They help you be faster and more consistent by removing unnecessary steps. Less targeting, fewer clicks, and quicker reactions add up fast, especially in high-pressure situations.
Mouseover Macros
Mouseover macros let you cast directly on the unit your cursor is hovering over, which makes healing feel much smoother and more responsive.
Blizzard does offer mouseover casting in the base settings now, but macros still give you more flexibility.
Template (replace SPELL/ABILITY):
#showtooltip SPELL/ABILITY
/use [@mouseover,help,nodead][help,nodead][@player] SPELL/ABILITY
Example:
#showtooltip Emerald Blossom(Green)
/use [@mouseover,help,nodead][help,nodead][@player] Emerald Blossom(Green)
This prioritizes mouseover, then your target, and finally yourself if neither is valid.
Cursor Based Ground Targeting
Ground-targeted spells normally require two inputs: placing the targeting circle and then confirming the cast. In moments where reaction time matters, that extra step can be costly.
Cursor macros skip the targeting circle and instantly cast the spell at your cursor position. This works best for spells you’re already comfortable placing.
Template (replace SPELL/ABILITY):
#showtooltip SPELL/ABILITY
/cast [@cursor] SPELL/ABILITY
Combining Spells or Items
Macros are also great for combining abilities you always use together. For example, if you have a trinket that you consistently use alongside a major cooldown, you can bind both to a single button.
Template (replace SPELL/ABILITY):
#showtooltip SPELL/ABILITY
/cast SPELL/ABILITY
/use ITEM/SPELL/ABILITY