Utopia

With today’s high-end boss fights so tuned for absolute maximum performance, it’s important to know exactly what you’re getting from your raiders. Do you have all buffs and debuffs available? Are they all improved? Are they active during the fight? Need to see that they were kept up during the fight?

WoW 3.0 introduced a whole new stacking system for buffs and debuffs. Add to that the myriad of hidden auras that are implied by talents, but don’t appear on the tooltips. It’s near impossible to look through that ever-moving mess of debuffs on a target. It’s just too much to look at. Nor should you have to.

So, here’s Utopia. It will give you a very concise and clear view of your buffs and debuffs (see the buff display pictured below). With a fixed number of icons, which don’t move or change. They’ll simply be highlighted in red if missing; otherwise faded if unavailable, bright if present, yellow if present but unimproved, and so on.

Clarity is the key, and how fast you can answer any questions mid-fight. I play a rogue, and because our warriors slack (they like to pretend to DPS and moan about Sundering), we can very quickly see whether Sunder Armor is applied and, if it’s absent, throw Expose Armor into our cycle. The icon is always in the same place and always means the same thing.