Using Grid & Clique with your Paladin Tank

I’ve been using Grid & Clique with my resto druid for quite awhile. I tried out Healbot and Vuhdo, but found I preferred the method of Grid & Clique for healing. Soon after settling on this combination, I found that Clique had several other useful capabilities, since it could be used with any UI component, including the Blizzard default unit frames.

My personal take on playing a class that can remove a debuff is that it’s your responsibility to ensure you can help the group by removing that debuff whenever possible. That means you – poison removing boomkin or disease removing ret pally! This is especially important if the healer in your group is unable to remove that particular type of debuff. I find, as I run dungeons with the random dungeon finder, that I’m one of the few non-healing classes who actually helps in this way.

So I started out with my pally, while running 5 mans, having just Clique setup to allow me to Cleanse using the default unit frames. That worked fine for 5 mans (although I found sometimes I didn’t notice something needed to be cleansed until it had been on the target for awhile).

When I started raiding, I felt I needed more. That’s when I loaded up Grid, and started playing with the settings to show me more information. I also added a lot of buttons to my Clique setup in order to be more effective at tanking. There’s so much more to do than just help with Cleanse!
 

On the left, you can see my Clique setup for Xelencia, my protection paladin.  I put Cleanse on my left mouse button since it’s the thing I use the most. The only other spell I use in every dungeon and raid I tank is Righteous Defense. Having these two setup has been priceless. Lay On Hands is also especially nice to save yourself or someone else, and prevent a wipe. 

 

To the right you can see how my Grid looks when in a raid. We were fighting against Sindragosa at the time. From the image I can see that two characters are not at full health, Xelencia is the only character with aggro on a target, Rixa has Forbearance, and Xelencia is under the effect of Hand of Freedom.

On the left is my Grid Configuration window, showing the center icon settings which display Diseases, Magic, and Poison - to indicate when I should use Cleanse on someone.  Not shown is my Border (Aggro Alert), Top Left Corner (Forbearance), and Bottom Right Corner (Hand of Freedom).  With Center Icon, it will show the icon specific to that debuff.  The corners show small boxes (you can pick the color) to indicate when the conditions are met.  Border will light up in whatever color you choose to display (I choose bright red).  


One of the beautiful things about Grid is that it is so highly configurable.  You can add buffs and debuffs to Grid's built in list if you want something to display that it doesn't have.  You can pick what colors you want to see, how thick you want your borders to be, how big your squares should be, etc.  Everything is configurable.

How to Use it!

Once you have Grid & Clique setup - you'll need to learn to use it.  If you're new to mouse-binding capabilities, I'd start out with just a couple things.  As I find Cleanse and Righteous Defense to be the most useful, I'd suggest starting out with those.  


Cleanse

This image shows that I have a poison on me. To cleanse it from the character it's on - just hover over that character's Grid box and click the mouse button you chose (via Clique) to be your cleansing button. So in this situation, I move my mouse over Xelencia's box and use my left mouse button to get rid of the poison. Paladins are lucky because they only have to worry about one button to cleanse everything. With my druid and priest I have my 5th mouse button set up to use one spell (Abolish Poison and Remove Disease), and use that same mouse button with the Shift modifier for their other ability.




Righteous Defense

Aggro!! 

In this image you can see that I have aggro, but the shaman in the 3rd Grid position also has aggro. I can also see that the healer is out of range, which makes it even more critical that I keep all the targets on me if at all possible. To regain the aggro on the adds that I have lost, I simply hover my mouse over that grid box and click my Righteous Defense button. I don't have to find the add that is attacking the shaman. I don't even have to know where the shaman is (as long as they're in range). This is a great capability that only paladin's have - and far more of us should take advantage of such a great spell.