Healbot Hero

Svenn posted a few pics recently of FIST's latest progression kills in Ulduar; among which was a screen shot of his UI with Healbot up and running. This has prompted several questions as to why a tank would want to have Hbot taking up valuable real estate on an admittedly already over crowded screen. There are several reasons Svenn will attempt to lay out as he tries to makes the case for all tanks to run Healbot or some similar type addon (and yes healing is one of them, but a very minor one, so all you warriors don't tune out quite yet).

Situational Awareness. Svenn is huge on being able to see everything that is going on around him. Maybe it comes from to many years in the Army, but he feels it important to his decision making cycle to know everyone else in the raids status. Healbot allows this through an easy display which can be set up to show all members of the raid's health bars with their mana/energy/rage/ etc. levels underneath their health bar. This allows Svenn at a glance to see who is taking damage.

Someone besides another tank taking damage prompts questions:
Did an add get lose that Svenn needs to pick up?
Is it splash damage Svenn can direct the player to reposition out of?
Is it just the normal AoE damage inherent in the fight?

This also enhances the knowledge of the flow of the fight damage wise, and allows Svenn to anticipate when he will be getting those big single target heals or when the healer will be busy spamming group heals.

Hbot also allows Svenn to keep tabs on the healers' mana situation. This alows for anticipation of when to use cooldowns, or when off tanking to pitch in a few heals when possible. Additionally, he gets to see everyone else's resources as well, which can be invaluable to help direct the tempo of a fight, ie. "hey rouges, you need to save some energy for the interrupt coming up soon." etc.

Targeting. Svenn uses Healbot in lieu of some macros. Essentially, Healbot allows for "mouse over" targeting of players. Any spell or ability (as far as I know) can be typed into it and assigned a "hot key", ie. Right click= Righteous Defense, ALT+ Right Click= Blessing of Protection and so on.

This allows Svenn to hover over a particular player's frame in Hbot, cast a spell, all while never deselecting his current target. This makes for incredibly fast reaction times while maintaining TPS on your current target. As far as Svenn has tested it, it works for all abilities, though he needs to test if further on other classes. Combine this with the /focus target and /target of targets and /assist functions and it is instant "slew to cue".

Peace of Mind. Healbot can be set up to display incoming heals from other healers (at least other healers running Hbot). This can make the difference between burning a cooldown unnecessarily or waiting for the heal you now know is coming to hit.

Svenn is not trying to sell Healbot to anyone, and is not getting any money from the Healbot creators (though if they are interested we may be able to work out an endorsement deal:). Rather, he is simply trying to say that it is another useful tool in a tank's "kit bag" to help keep a raid up running. Healbot, it's not just for healers anymore.