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Getting Started Guide
Note: This page is out of date, and needs attention!
Welcome, new Grid user! This guide will walk you through the basics of configuring Grid to meet your needs. If you already know how to do something, or don't care about the long explanation, that's fine — the guide is broken down into clearly marked sections to make it easy to find just what you're looking for.
Grid is based on the concept of statuses and indicators. You'll see these terms appear in the options menus, so it's important to know what they are. A status is a piece of information, such as a unit's health or aggro status. An indicator is a part of the unit frame that can display information, such as the health bar or the center text.
More than one status can be assigned to one indicator, and one status can be assigned to more than one indicator. This is where the priority system comes into play. Each status is assigned a priority level. Each indicator will show the highest-priority status active at any given time.
For example: The Power Word: Shield and Weakened Soul statuses show you when those auras (buffs or debuffs) are active on a particular unit. If you assign both statuses to the Bottom Left Corner indicator, and give them priority levels of 90 and 80, respectively, then when you cast Power Word: Shield on a unit, you will only see the Power Word: Shield status, until the shield is absorbed or expires, at which time you will then see the Weakened Soul status until it ends.
Grid's default settings are designed to work for all classes. However, depending on your class and role, there are a few things you may want to change. Let's start with dispellable debuffs.
By default, all four types of dispellable debuffs (Curse, Disease, Magic, and Poison) are shown. For the sake of example, let's pretend you're a shaman. You can dispel curses, diseases, and poisons. Let's hide magic debuffs, so that when you see the center icon appear in the middle of a fight, you'll know that player has a debuff you can dispel.
Right-click on the Grid icon around your minimap. Select the "Frame" submenu. The options in this group controls what information Grid displays on each unit frame, and how that information is displayed. By default, all dispellable debuffs are shown on the Center Icon indicator, so select that in the menu. Now you'll see a list of statuses that can be shown on the Center Icon indicator. Uncheck "Debuff Type: Magic" to remove that status from the Center Icon.
Now, you can use the same menu to add or remove any other status from any other indicator. Want to see aggro as a red border around the frame instead of as a red corner tile? Uncheck "Aggro alert" under Frame > Top Left Corner, and check it under Frame > Frame Border.
All statuses have a few common options. Let's take a look at the "Death warning" status. You'll find it, along with all other statuses, under the "Status" submenu when right-clicking on the Grid minimap icon.
This is a very simple status, so it only has the basic options:
Color controls what color Grid uses to show the status. If you set the color of a status to pink, and assign it to the Frame Border indicator, then when the status is active, the frame will gain a pink border. Likewise, if you assign the status to the Bottom Right Corner indicator, then the frame will gain a pink square in the bottom right corner when the status is active.
Hint: The Frame Alpha indicator displays information by changing the opacity of the frame. It uses the alpha channel of a status's color setting to determine how opaque to make the frame. Use the slider on the right side of the color picker to change the color's alpha channel. Moving the slider towards the top increases the alpha value, so the frame will be more opaque (less transparent). Moving the slider toward the bottom decreases the alpha value, so the frame will be less opaque (more transparent).
Priority controls how the status is layered with other statuses that are displayed on the same indicator. In the example at the beginning of this guide, we explained how setting the priority of the Power Word: Shield buff higher than the priority of the Weakened Soul debuff made it possible to have a single indicator that showed Power Word: Shield as long as it was active, and then, once the shield faded, Weakened Soul.
The priority system is important because it allows Grid to show a lot of information, without overloading you with tons of things that aren't relevant right now. Returning to the above example, as long as Power Word: Shield is still active on someone, it's not important to know if they also have the Weakened Soul debuff, because you shouldn't cast a new Power Word: Shield on them yet anyway. But, when it later becomes important to know whether they have Weakened Woul, the information is there.
This allows you to disable a status without having to individually remove it from all the indicators it's assigned to. There is no functional or performance difference between disabling a status this way, or removing it from all indicators. If you know you're never going to use a particular status, you can globally disable it here; otherwise, it's usually easier to manage it by unassigning it from indicators.
Individual statuses can have unique options. For example, the "Aggro alert" status has an option to show threat levels instead of just aggro, while the "Ready Check" status has options to configure the individual colors for different ready check responses.
Auras (buffs and debuffs) have a few extra options in common:
This option allows the duration of the (de)buff to be shown on indicators that support it. Currently, the only core indicator which can display durations is the Center Icon. Enabling this option will make Grid consume more resources, so it's disabled by default.
Buffs have several more common options:
If this option is enabled, the buff will only be shown if you cast it. You can use this option is to see only your own HoTs, for example.
If this option is enabled, the status will activate when the buff is missing, instead of when it's present. This is helpful for buffing classes, to see when someone is missing an important buff. When considering whether to use this option, you should consider which setting would result in more information being displayed, and then choose the opposite.
:eg. If you're a priest wanting to know who's missing Power Word: Fortitude, it's better to enable the Show if missing setting, because it's easier to notice when just a few people have a status active, than when everyone has a status active and just a few people are missing it!
For this example, let's pretend you're a warrior, and you want Grid to show you who has Vigilance.
Vigilance is a buff, so information about whether someone has it would be a status. Right-click the Grid icon, and choose the "Status" menu. Since there are lots of auras (buffs and debuffs) to keep track of, they are categorized under their own submenu; choose "Auras". Now choose the "Add new buff..." entry. In the input box, type "Vigilance" and press Enter.
Looking back at the Status > Auras menu, you'll see that a new status "Buff: Vigilance" was added. In its submenu, you'll find all the options normally available for buffs, including color, priority, range filter, class filter, and options to show the duration, show only when missing, or show only if you cast it.