I don’t think I could count the number of times I’ve seen; “What’s better grid or healbot”, “is healbot crap” type posts on forums, so I thought I would write up a bit of a review of each. Now as you would know I have been using Grid since I have been healing but I will try to not be too bias

The battle will be decided based on 4 key criteria;

1. Out of the Box – can the system be used out of the box with minimal customisation.
2. Ease of Configuration – how easy was it to get the addons setup to be, in my eye, usable.
3. Customisation Potential – can the addon be extended and/or customised to suit my needs.
4. Post Install Ease of Use / Presentation of Essential Information – does it work, is it easy to use in a raid and can I see the information I want when I need it.

I will then give scores of 1-3 for each addon, with the highest points being the best addon for that criteria.

Basically for the purposes of this battle I blew away all of my addons and just installed the healing frame (one at a time). Their is a key different between Vuhdo/Healbot and Grid being that Grid is essentially a ‘framework’, that is designed to be extended by third party addons, for this reason I have also installed Clique and a couple of the common Grid extensions; such of HoT Timers, Raid Debuffs, Corner Indicators etc.

I hope this is ok with you Vuhdo/Healbot users

1. Out of the Box

Vuhdo - First thing I noticed is the different frames are all bunched up, I personally don’t want a separate frame for Tanks/Raid etc so the additional frames add confusion to the mix. The initial spells mapped to mouse clicks etc are probably not all that relevant to a level 80 druid (healing touch etc) but overall the default options create a good indication of what can be done and a starting point for configuration.

Grid - The default view is pretty much a standard grid layout, all information presented in a nice screen. Clique is accessed through your Spell book but has no defaults setup so it’s a clean start and is not usable without configuration. I have my macros/key bindings setup already so I could easily use this out of the box with minimal issues.

Healbot - Very nice out of the box, frames quite large but realistic defaults are setup of druids and default skin looks good.

Healbot – 3 points
Vuhdo – 2 points
Grid – 1 point

2. Ease of Configuration

Vuhdo - The configuration of Vuhdo is great, a fresh way of looking at things. The only thing I would say is that given the wide scope of functionality and features you can sometimes get lost.

Grid - Grid is notoriously difficult to configure, I think it’s more that their is not a lot of logic in the way the options menu is setup and it takes a while to work out what you are changing. The inclusion of a second module to handle the click functionality adds another level of configuration difficulties /sigh (we all knew this was coming haha). One thing to note is that Grid2 is being worked on and one of the primary objectives of this project is to simplify the configuration process.

Healbot - Pretty easy to configure although can get confusing when choosing your left/middle/right click etc. Single frame and logical layout with tabs etc.

Vuhdo – 3 points
Healbot – 2 points
Grid – 1 point

3. Customisation Potential

Vuhdo - Vuhdoo has been designed to cover all possible scenarios and options and achieves a great all-in-one solution for healers. It however (as far as I’ve seen) does not provide the flexability to be extended through additional addons. I think that this is something could be worked on to allow other addon authors to write their own little pieces that slot into the Vuhdo code seamlessly.

Grid - Grid has an enourmous support base and has many extension addons to provide additional functionality. It was never designed to be the all-in-one that Vuhdo has done so well, it went the other way and designed a simple to use (not configure) addon that was extendable however anybody chooses to.

Healbot - I didn’t see a lot of customisation options although the skins feature is cool to quickly switch to a new layout.

Grid – 3 points
Vuhdo – 2 points
Healbot- 1 point

4. Post Setup Ease of Use / Presentation of Essential Information

Vuhdo - If there is one thing that I feel lets Vuhdo down it is this area, the information is not always as clear as I want it, this may just be my configuration but I feel that the colours and the way the indicators are setup cause too much clutter within the frame itself.

Grid - This is where Grid really shines, the information you want is available in a very clear and concise may, you can very easily see who needs healing and how much as well as information about your hots, buffs, debuffs, etc etc through the extension addons.

Healbot - I found the hot timers to be overwhelming and had similar issues with getting the frames filled with a lot of information quickly. The use of icons made the timers more clear but in some of the skins I couldnt even see who it was I was healing (grid view for example).

Grid – 3 points
Vuhdo – 2 points
Healbot- 1 point

The Final Results

Well after careful deliberation and no fiddling of the results the result is a non-commital draw across the board haha

Vuhdo with a score of 9
Grid with a score of 8
Healbot with a score of 7

I have decided though that the most important criteria is the Post Setup Ease of Use and Presentation of Essential Information and I therefore give double points for that round.

Leaving the totals as follows:

Vuhdo with a score of 11
Grid with a score of 11
Healbot with a score of 8

And the Winnah is tied between Vuhdo and Grid

Really my post highlights the fact that each of these Healing Frames have a lot to offer and each have merit as a great Healing Frame. If Vuhdo looked at sorting the presentation of information then I think that it would be my choice going forwards.

Update: corrected my calculations