Tank like a girl

It all began when I just couldn’t keep track of my weapon buffs on my shaman. I started looking for an addon that would give me a visual cue when Flametongue ran out, and that’s how I found TellMeWhen.

TellMeWhen is a visual reminder addon. What does it do? It offers you four different icon groups that you can configure to show as many buttons as needed. Every icon group can be scaled individually. Once you have set up a group, you place it where you want the reminders, then right-click on any button to configure them. On my shaman, I have one icon group with a huge icon in the center of my screen, which will only show up if there is no weapon enchant on my main hand. Handy!

However, that’s not all you can do with this addon, and by now I’ve actually configured it to be used by all my characters. Here’s what I use it for on my warrior:

 

 
An icon group of five. First icon shows when my Retaliation macro is available. Second icon is visible when my Recklessness macro is available. Third icon is visible when my Medallion of Heroism is usable. Fourth icon pops up when I have no Well Fed buff. Fifth icon shows me when Heroic Throw is available. In my sample screenshot all macros, the trinket and Heroic Throw are available, plus I hadn’t eaten, because I was fishing in Borean Tundra.

You can set it up so that buttons will only show during combat, so you could use it as a Shout Reminder. As my example shows, you can configure it so that buttons either show when something’s off cooldown, or when a buff is missing. It’s flexible, easy to configure, gets my thumbs up.

To further demonstrate its strength, let me actually set up the Shout Reminder. You can click on some of the images for a larger version.

1. Activate an icon group in this menu. I’ll set it to 1 row, 1 column, because that one button is all I want. I can now drag this huge button wherever I want to have it, and then click in the lower right bottom corner to change the size.
   
    
   
2. Right-click on the button and pick a spell. In my case I will use Battle Shout. A questionmark icon shows up, that’s just a placeholder until you have told TMW what kind of ability this is. In my case, that’s a Buff. Bam, Battle Shout icon shows up.
   
    
   
   
    
   
   
    
   
3. Now we refine the settings. I only want to see this button when I am in-combat, and I am missing Battle Shout, and I only want it to monitor myself.
   
    
   
   
    
   
   
    
   

    
   All done! Now whenever I am in combat and I don’t have Battle Shout up, this button pops up to nag me, and disappears while I out of combat. Set up Commanding Shout next to it, and you’ll never miss a shout dropping again.

Want to watch a debuff on a mob to keep it up, like Thunderclap or Demo Shout? You can set it up just like that. The possibilities are almost endless.

If you prefer an equally flexible setup for watching buffs/debuffs but really prefer timer bars, you should check out Runycat’s post about NeedToKnow over at Unbearably HoT. It’s by the same author, but provides bars instead of icons to watch effects on a target.