Addon Corner: TellMeWhen
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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
17 Responses to “Addon Corner: TellMeWhen”
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- 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.
Thank you! I don’t experiment enough with addons so I’ve resorted to setting up an oversized action bar near the middle of my screen to keep track of when various cooldowns are available but this looks far better (and cleaner and can accomplish a lot more)
I’ll try it out today
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Hey, great post!
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Great post. I appreciate the “walkthrough.” I’ll definitely have to check this one out.
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I absolutely LOVE Tell Me When and have been talking it up to my guildies; 3 or 4 of them have installed it so far and are loving it too. I’m glad to see it get some more widespread press.
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This sounds like something I will have to take a look at. Question though, lets say I’m in a raid with a paladin doing might buffs, will I be stuck watching that BS button then or are can it be set up with a “smart” detection mode for lets say fading out if there is a BoM on me instead?
I reckon this would be relevant for other classes with conflicting buffs too.
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admin Reply:
January 25th, 2009 at 12:19 pm
At the moment, TMW is not quite that smart. I don’t think I know any buff tracker that does that. However, it’s entirely possible that this would be possible lua-wise, as I do not get prompted for a weapon enchant if another one is on already.
Best thing you can do is leave feedback and feature requests at the author’s portal at wowinterface or Curse.
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Awesome post and great add-on. Just tried it out and it’s definitely part of my regular set now. Thank you!
-Fri
Friday´s last blog post..The Hottest New Sport in Azeroth
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I tried to set up TellMeWhen to manage my cooldowns (rev, ss, shockwave and cb) but I didn’t like the way it handled revenge and that it wasn’t possible to track BS and CS on the same button. The Addon has great potential but I’d love to see some minor additions (and maybe buttonfacade support ^^)
Need to Know on the other Hand is one of my favorite buff/debuff tracking addon at this point.
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admin Reply:
January 26th, 2009 at 10:08 pm
Oh yeah, BF support would be sweet, I agree. I think the author is very open to suggestions, so head on over to Curse.
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Interesting addon – looks simple but effective. You might want to try Power Auras, which I have been using for a long time now, to track when CDs are up, as well as a myriad of other things. It’s wonderfully customisable, and you can set it to be very subtle or in-your-face for its alerts. Highly recommended.
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admin Reply:
February 5th, 2009 at 2:44 pm
I’ve pondered giving Power Auras a shot, because a halo around me when Spell Reflection is available sounds awesome. On the other hand, both addons seem to overlap, so it’ll come down to how much resources each use up.
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I appreciate the step-by-step instructions… they were helpful, but, I can’t seem to get this addon to work. I play an Affliction Warlock and the simple design of TMW seemed to be a perfect match for my class. The bar seems to stay on my screen all the time eventhough I have the box checked for “Combat Only”. Also, nothing happens to the look of the bar when I throw a DoT. It gives me no information at all. I have the five DoTs that are essential for me to track on one bar. Is that correct? I was also unsure of how to qualify a spell like “Haunt”. Would the program see that as a debuff on the target… or… as a “Reactive Spell”? I really look forward to making this work for me. Any advice you can offer would be appreciated.
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admin Reply:
February 14th, 2009 at 2:40 am
Hm, what are you trying to do with it? I think if you want to track your DoTs with it, you need a debuff tracker. TellMeWhen is basically just a cooldown tracker. The only thing this addon does is that it shows you a button when some spell is missing or becomes available.
Just let me know what you’re trying to do with the addon, and I’ll try to assist.
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Yogi Reply:
April 29th, 2009 at 7:49 pm
Actually works perfectly for locks and I can’t raid without it. However wondering if anyone is having problems with this since 3.1. It shows the times on other locks dots when before I could select to show only when I casted it. I’ve become pretty good setting this up so I’m confident that I haven’t missed anything. Wondering if anyone else has experienced it.
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I am using TellMeWhen on my mage. I can’t seem to set it up right for the Scorch spell. I set it as a debuff, on target, but it comes up when I use living bomb. Can anyone walk me through how to set up Scorch so that I know when it is gone from my target and need to cast again?
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Kadomi Reply:
December 15th, 2009 at 9:20 pm
Unfortunately I can’t really help there, as I moved on from TellMeWhen a while back and am using PowerAuras for what you want to do now.
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Thank you for responding, but I figured it out anyway. Turns out the debuff on my target was showing up as “Improved Scorch” not just scorch, so all is well now. = )
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