Mal's CTRaid Guide

Researched & Written By: Malenictor - Horde - Blackhand

The information provided in this document is based on CTRA v1.5 and is subject to change. Check back once in a while.

CTRA Overview (from http://www.ctmod.net/raidassist.ct)
CTRA is an overall Raid Assistant. It allows you to easily monitor health and mana/energy/rage of not only your group, but anyone/everyone in your raid. It also provides you with several additional ways to increase your raids performance. Usable in both PvE and PvP environments, CT_RaidAssist helps keep your raid group alive. There are three different ways to sort players, and customizing the mod to your liking is easier than ever. You can sort into classes, raid groups, or even drag every member around to your heart's content with custom sorting. Every group window itself can be dragged anywhere on the screen. You can select which groups/classes to show with a simple click on a button, and you can bind a key to show/hide groups with a tap on a key.

Features

Display health, mana, buffs and debuffs for everybody in the raid. Report health and mana for not only yourself, but the whole party if you so wish.
Cure debuffs with the tap on a button. You can choose which groups to alert for, if you want to split up the curing between members.
Easily choose which groups/classes to display, and choose between sorting by group, class, or custom.
Choose which buffs to display, and edit the priorities for which buffs to display if more than 4.
Get a chat message when a buff you can cast expires. You can recast the buff by the click on a button, similar to curing debuffs. Again, you can split up rebuffing by selecting which groups to alert for.
Assign 5 players as Main Tanks, which in turn displays name, health and mana of their targets.
Customize the mod as much as you want. You can hide party frames, offline members, members not available, hide window borders, change window background, have the background change to a select color when debuffed with a special type of debuff, as well as many other features. The best way to see what all it can do is try it out for yourself.
Conserve mana by auto-canceling healing spells if target is above X% health. Note that this check only is activated during combat.
Quick inviting features including /rainvite which allows you to invite everyone in your guild of specified levels, and /rakeyword to set a keyword so anyone who whispers you with it, will then be invited.
Raid alert messages utilizing /rs, which allow raid leaders to send messages that will appear on screen for everyone using the mod.

Initial Configuration
Most of these images and setting are my default settings, I recommend using them as a guide line for initially setting up CTRA if you are not familiar with all of the different CTRA settings. These are also from the my perspective as a priest. I will skip many settings that are self explanatory, or that are not very commonly used.

General Options

Show group names	Show the group names for each group on the screen.
Lock group positions	Locks the group windows in place so they are not draggable.
Hide Mana / Health / Rage / Energy Bars	Each one does exactly what it says. I hide the rage / energy bars.
Channel Name	This is mainly for the current raid-leader. CTRA has to communicate via a channel in order to work correctly. Best practice is to announce the channel just before your raid starts.
Display main tanks	CTRA can have up to ten main tanks set by the raid leader, this number is how many you want to see when viewing the main tanks.

Buff Options

Buffs	Here you will configure which buffs are shown in the top-right corner of the player-frame. The CTRA player frames also only display four buffs at a time, so arrange them in the order that they are important to your class.
Debuffs	This shows which debuffs are shown (the whole player-frame will be colored with this color-setting). Only activate those you can counter.
Notifications	Notifications via system-message about the (de)buffs you can cure/recast. You also can set a key-binding for cure or rebuff , so when this message arrives you hit the key and the target will automatically be cured/rebuffed with the correct spell. Keep those activated (You'll only get notified if you really can cast anyway). Here is a sample chat log:

Misc Options

Mana Conserve	This is undoubtedly the most useful feature of CTRA for healing classes and the main reason, why "we insist" on getting CTRA installed by all raid participants, because health/mana and all the other useful information can only be processed by CTRA, if everyone has it actually installed. These are my settings as a priest, using my gear, so they may not be the same for you or your class. I suggest experimenting with them, and using these settings as a rough starting point if a priest. My settings 1500 Greater Heal, 1000 Flash Heal explained: Greater heal is the priests "big" heal and from my experience it is best cast at about 50% target health. If the heal will not heal them of at least 1500 hit points CTRA will cancel the heal to save mana. The same goes for the flash heal, on average a flash heal will land for around 1100 with most level 60 priests. The vast majprity of time in Molten Core / Onxyia / BWL I am spamming flash heal, and very rarely do I ever cast Greater Heal as the cast time is too long, and I need to be moving on to the next heal target.
Check Time	The amount of time before the heal actually lands that CTRA will check the targets health to determine whether or not to cancel the heal. More often than not CTRA does a very good job of canceling heals, the only issue that comes into play is when multiple heals land at almost EXACTLY the same time.
Use percent values	Instead of using a hard coded hit points value, switches to evaluating the targets health by percent.
Show tank death notifications	Whenever a tank dies, a notification is popped up with the tanks name. Very useful to know for an off tank who may need to step in, or for the raid to stop dps so the OT can obtain agro.
Show MT's Target's Target	HEH? What does that mean?... In english: if the main tank is beating on a mob, it shows who that mob is beating on, not necessarily the main tank. As a healer I often use this to target who I am healing, for example when fighting destroyers / giants in MC, I use this to assist the tanks target so that I can get a jump on healing whoever they are stomping in conjunction with the emergency heal monitor.
Notify on agro gain - play sound	You took agro away from the main tank, bad news for you. Do something to release that agro if you can, or just stop doing dps.

Additional Options

Emergency Monitor

Useful for both healing classes and supporters. Shows an emergency monitor with raid-members that have less then a specified amount of health left. Useful for Priority One heals or as an indicator whom to help / heal as fast as possible. Clicking a bar will target that raid member and allow you to heal them. The monitor shows the amount of health they have lost, and their chararcter name.

Debuff Curing

This allows for a sepcific set of rules to be applied for certain types of debuffs. This helps the debuff key be more intelligent about who / what it debuffs when. For example, the highlighted debuff Ignite Mana only affects players with mana, so in the rules it disregards removing it from warriors and rogues, as it does no damage to them. Each rule set comes with its own priorites as well. The built in priority set for the FireLord's "Soul Burn", In it you can see that the targeted player gets dispelled first, then main tanks, priests, and so on. To change the priorities, drag and drop each button to the spot that you desire it to be in. CTRA come many built in rule sets and priorities for those rules. One rule set that may be beneficial that is not in the defaults is to add one for Sulfuron's priests shadowword pain, so that the main tanks get priority on dispelling.

CTRA Key Bindings

Cure Raid Debuffs

Also referred to as the "debuff key" Pressing this key, will search for anyone that you can cast a dispel magic / cure disease / remove poison on, and cast the appropriate spell. It also uses the above rules to determine who should get dispelled and in the order they should get dispelled. It is extremely fast, and effecient. Using this key I am able to solo dispel the entire raid for Baron Geddon. In my opinion, the Sulfuron and Geddon fights are made much easier by using this feature. In order to check if a player is in range for cures, you need to have the spell in question on an action button. The system should automatically enable range checking if you have the spell on one of your action buttons.

Toggle resurrection monitor

The resurrection monitor is useful for healers when there are several rezzing, it shows each healers rez target.

Useful features
Version 1.5

Player Targets	Added PlayerTargets. Similar to MTT's, but client side. Everyone can set up to 10 PlayerTargets which will only be seen by you. Player targets function slightly different than MTT's and more similar to the way the Blizzard frames work. Setting a PlayerTarget will add a box showing their hp/mana just like a normal CTRA frame, however if you enable showing Players Target's Target, you will get an expanded box (like MTT's) that shows you the players target to the right of their CTRA window. This means anyone (not just leaders) can set targets for people you choose. To do so, simply go to the CTRaid tab of the social window and right click the player you wish to set as a PTT. NOTE: In our next release, we will allow dragging PT's off of the raid window, just like blizzard's raid frame except using CTRA windows for much more efficiency.
Auto-set loot type option	Added an auto-set loot type option to the Raid tab. Setting your preferred loot type will automatically set loot to that type when you form the raid.
/raquiet or /rasquelch	Added /raquiet or /rasquelch. Raid leaders can use /raquiet to disable all chat in the raid channel. This option will time out after 5 minutes or until disabled by the raid leader.
/ravote	Added /ravote. /ravote allows you to take a poll of your raid group. Using the format /ravote question? will send your question to the raid. For example, /ravote Do you have your Onyxia cloak on? Raid members will have the option to select yes or no, and results will be provided for yes, no, and did not vote.
Version 1.4

/raitem	Added /raitem. Usable via /raitem ItemName or /raitem [Item Link]; allowing for you to type in or shift+click a link to see everyone in raid who has the item listed. (Very useful to do /raitem Aqual Quintessence to see who came to MC prepared)
Version 1.3

/rareg	/rareg added. /rareg, short for Raid Reagents, returns a list of all major spell reagents currently in posession. For priests it lists # of candles, druids # of thornroot, mages # of arcane powder, and warlocks # of soulshards.