Tell Me When

Synopsis
For cat DPS I use the addon TellMeWhen to have a good visual of buffs and debuffs. This is on how to set it up and my experiences with it.

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When I started this blog a few days ago I had a lot of thoughts about what I could write here. Karthis and I seem to inspire each other. He made a post on his user layout which I also had in mind. Since he is on that subject I'll add to that and tell you what I find so great about the addon TellMeWhen. Btw, credits on this go to a poster on Elitist Jerks who first introduced me to TellMeWhen.

First of all a screenshot.


This is the setup screen. Don't mind the things in the bottom. They are part of my own fully customised UI. The only thing important is what is above my unitframe Orange bar Monedula, which is if you must know ag_unitframes mod. It is pretty much in the center, maybe a bit too much in the center for some, but at least it is obviously there and can't be missed.
First of all it is made up out of 4 different bars. In the standard game inteface > addons > TellMeWhen you can set those up. Either enable or disable them, how many columns they have and how many rows. You can easily resize them (right bottom corner) to make them bigger or smaller.
For each button you can set the following:

• The name of the spell. Note: It must be the full name (i.e. Mangle - Cat, not just mangle)
  
• The type of the Icon. I only use cooldown or buff/debuff.

For buff/debuff (which is the most used option) you then can set whether it is a buff or a debuff, on you or on your target, you want to show it when it is active or not active, whether you want to see a cooldown timer, and last, most importantly, whether it should be shown when it is the debuff you applied or a debuff applied by whomever.

I myself have it setup as follows:
4 bars:

3 columns:

• Tiger's Fury (cooldown: show if ready)
• Berserk (cooldown: show if ready)
• Lacerate (debuff on target, for when I tank. It shows stacks also + clock timer)

2 columns:

• Clearcasting (buff active on me + clock timer). This one is huge, I don't want to miss it
  
• Twilight Torment (debuff active on me). Also huge, I don't want to hit and stress healers unless necessary on the sarth 3d fight.
  

5 columns:

• Savage Roar (buff active on me + clock timer)
• Rake (debuff active on target + clock timer)
• Rip (debuff on target + clock timer)
• Faerie Fire (Feral) (debuff on target + clock timer, done by anyone)
• Faerie Fire (debuff on target + clock, done by anyone)
  

3 icons:

• Trauma (debuff on target, done by anyone)
  
• Mangle - Cat (debuff on target + clock timer, done by anyone)
• Mangle - Bear (debuff on target + clock timer, done by anyone)

Positive things:
You can track other peoples debuffs on target so you don't need to apply them (Mangle).
You can add any debuff you got so you can be carefull if needed.
Compared to a bar system each icon has its own place. If an icon is missing you know which one it is!
Important icons can be HUGE!

In action it would look like this:

You can see the clock timers active on the icons (for instance Savage Roar here is a 14 second buff that has 13 seconds left till it is gone). I also installed OmniCC which displays the seconds. In PTR this will become really important if you have TellMeWhen. Why I will explain later.
To continue, here you can see both Tigers Fury and Berserk are ready and I have all my debuffs active on the target. A huge Clearcasting proc int he middle (kinda over my character, but that is ok, I don't want to miss my free shred!)
As you can (not) see, there is no lacerate (to the right of berserk) active ont he target. Something that is not active will not be shown.

One more thing, some spells (as can be seen int he first screenshot) are depicted by a watch. This is a default Icon for when the icon is not available (yet). For instance Faerie Fire (Feral) is a spell you don't have in normal form and is not available. Also TellMeWhen does not know what Clearcasting looks like. However after combat it does know these things and when going back to the configuration display you will see those spells have the correct icon now.

One last thing I promised on why OmniCC will become important.

The new Glyph of Shred in PTR will add 2 seconds to mangle every time you do shred (max 3 times). So max 26 seconds. Currently if you are not using OmniCC you will see a clock timer on Rip that will have made a complete circle in 20 seconds. When you look at the buff and see it is half way you know it will take 10 seconds before it is finished.
Now the way Shred increasing Rip is implemented on PTR is this.
You do Rip. Rip lasts 20 seconds:

• Rip debuff 20 seconds, time left 20 seconds.

When you then shred at 8 seconds rather then doing the following:

• Rip debuff 22 seconds, time left 10 seconds. <- this is not the way it works!

The implementation is as follows:

• Rip debuff 10 seconds, time left 10 seconds.

If you were to use a clock timer only the clock timer cooldown would be reset to 0 and now go at double speed. The clock timer half way done means 5 seconds left! So without OmniCC telling you exactly how many seconds are left it will be very hard to keep track of Rip duration.