Skada Damage Meters

Before I start my review of Skada, I wanted to thank the support I've been getting from friends and the ladies over at WoW_Ladies on Live Journal. I appreciate it quite a bit and it's my encouragement to try and keep this up. Additionally, I'll be willing evaluate your UI if you send me an email including at least two screenshots of your UI (one in combat and one out would probably be best). I'll be honest in my critique of it, but I will try to offer advice on where I feel you can improve. If you want me to, please send me an email with two screenshots, your name (character name is fine), and what you're trying to do with your UI the way it is and if you're looking for specific things to be changed. Send that to caelys@gmail.com.

What is Skada?

Skada Damage Meters is.. well it's a damage meter, which I hope you managed to figure out on your own. One of the biggest differences between Skada and the ever popular Recount, is it's not a memory hog. In Vault of Archavon, Recount uses around 10-20MiB for all the data it's storing. Skada, by comparison in the same raid setting, uses 1.7MiB. 

How does it work?

Again, I don't claim to know anything about .lua files, but my understanding of damage meters is that it basically converts everything that's going through your combat log and parses it into a more graphical or visual form. 

What makes it different from Recount?

As I said before, it's not a memory hog - which is great for those of us who play on laptops or on a computer that is slightly outdated. Lowering the amount of memory your addons as a whole are using should improve your frame rate and potentially game play (if you play with a very low fps or high latency). 

There are, however, three features to Skada that I think sets it apart from Recount; Absorbs Meters, multiple window capabilities and its Combat Mode Switching.

The Absorbs Meter is basically a godsend for all those discipline priests out there tired of trying to explain to uneducated bafoons that discipline is about mitigation and absorbs more than it is raw healing. Sure, those bafoons may still tell you to, "Pick up the healing!" but at least you have your absorbs meter to remind you just how dumb the uneducated bafoons are  valuable you are in a raid.

The other thing I really enjoy about it is being able to have as many different meters running in their own windows. On the left I have my healing meters, on the right is damage. I don't have to go back and forth in one window to figure out healing and damage and dps. I can just open up a new window and set it up for healing. 

The final and potentially most useful aspect of Skada, is its combat mode switching. As soon as I enter combat, my healing meter on the left, immediately becomes my threat meter. What's that? I don't need to have Omen installed anymore? Joy! As soon as combat ends, it switches back to healing and I can review how I did on the fight and evaluate where I may need to improve or what gear I can potentially switch out. It should be noted for healers that you do need to have a target for the threat meter to actually show any threat. This, however, I don't believe is any different from other threat meters.

What are its drawbacks?

Actually using it isn't quite as intuitive as Recount is. One thing that I found took a little getting use to is how you actually navigate through Skada. The "Main menu" is of the fights you have data for. If you click Current Fight, it will automatically start updating the data as soon as you enter combat for each fight. This is what I normally have mine set to. Once you choose what fight you want to look at by clicking on it, you get into the SubMenus - Damage, healing, DPS, absorbs, deaths, etc. From there you choose what data you want to look at, again just by clicking on it. 

Let's say you wanted to go back though, and just look at the dps instead of the damage - where's the back button? Well, to navigate backwards through the menus, you right click pretty much anywhere on the meter. Oh, but now you want to spam meters because you just kicked some major ass on that boss. Where's your little trumpet/bugle? Well you don't get one of those. Sorry. There are plugins you can get to do that, but the default Skada frame doesn't have a little trumpet/bugle for you to spam to your heart's content. Instead, you use that little cog wheel. Click on that and go down to Report, pick the channel you want to gloat into, how many lines of the meter you want to post to (top 3, 5, 10, etc), and then click Send Report.

 

Should I get Skada?

Do you play on a laptop or otherwise outdated computer? Yes. Do you prefer to run low memory addons? Yes. Do you actually care about your, or your friends', placement on the meters? Sure.

Skada, in my experience, is an acquired taste. Many people prefer Recount, simply because it's what they've used forever and ever. I use Skada because I found that Recount was bogging me down in memory usage, and since I play on a laptop, that's a huge issue for me.

My rating for Skada Damage Meters?

I'll give it a 3/5 stars simply because there are other options out there that work just as well and are also more intuitive on using it. I prefer it myself, but like I said - it's an acquired taste.

Addon next up for review? Satrina's Buff Frames!

Yes, I am working through the addons I use first since they are the ones I'm most familiar with... Shush. >_>