OMNIBAR COURSE

TRACKING INTERRUPTS

If you're an arena player, you've most likely heard of and are even using Omnibar. It's a very powerful add-on based on the OG interrupt bar which let you track cooldowns on a single bar.

Today's iteration of the add-on has grown to be much more powerful and can be used to orchestrate an entire arena game. With that being said, we're willing to bet that you're not using it to its full potential.

See, most players tend to just have one bar set up and they either track just interrupts or a conglomeration of abilities. Now, the issue with the way most players use Omnibar is that tracking different types of abilities helps you in different ways.

So the first issue we're going to solve for you is to figure out exactly what the different types of abilities you should be tracking are. There are four different types.

The first and most obvious are of course interrupts. These are abilities like a warrior's pummel or a major counterspell.

Next we have offensives. These are abilities like a rogue's vendetta or a fire mage's combustion.

The third set of abilities is crowd control. Abilities like a monk's leg sweep or druid's bash go here.

And finally we have the remaining cooldowns which are a mixture of defensives, mobility and utility. These are abilities like a demon hunter's blur, a rogue's shadow step and a paladin's blessing of sanctuary.

Now that you know the four different types of cooldowns you should be tracking, let's get started. Let's take a deep dive into the major goals you can accomplish by tracking each different type of ability.

Starting with interrupts, there are two major goals you can accomplish here. The first is the most obvious one and that's for healers to know when they can free cast heals to keep their team alive.

This is even applicable to hybrid DPS that are able to cast heals. Take this clip as an example where my Omnibar shows that the mages counterspell is on cooldown but the warrior still has pummel.

This gives me an opportunity to attempt to fake out the warrior and after successfully doing so, I'm able to freely cast several flash of lights to keep myself alive. The second, more advanced goal here is that you can create kill windows by free casting crowd control and damage.

Here we see myself sitting in a stun while my healer is CC'd.

But because both counterspell and kick are on cooldown, Marrow is able to turn what seems like a losing situation into a winning one by Dragon's Breath, Ring of Frosting the paladin and polymorphing the mage which allows me to survive the stun, kidney the rogue and win the game.

TRACKING OFFENSIVES

Moving on to Offensives, the major goal you can accomplish here is that you and your team can effectively plan your defensive cooldown usage and your strategy ahead of time.

This clip here is a perfect example of how you can use information from Omnibar to determine what cooldowns you and your team should be using to survive.

If you take a look at my Omnibar, you can see that both Vendetta and Combustion are ready in under a minute, and both my Divine Shield and Blessing of Protection are on cooldown for more than a minute. You can also see that the Rogue's Blind is ready.

Now, if my healer trinkets this upcoming Blind, all the Rogue Mage will have to do is get my healer into one CC chain and I'll instantly die to their next set of offensive cooldowns. This means that my healer cannot trinket this Blind.

Let's take a look at what happens. I was ringing him so he gets AIDS.

Do you have trinket or cocoon? Do you have Blind?

Yeah, I do. We can't trinket this Blind.

Blind, blind. You can't trinket this Blind.

You can't. I don't know about that.

I was still ringing. I'm in Glacier.

You have to. Save, yeah, like, have to live a different way.

He has vanished though. He's gonna sap me.

Ah, fuck, man. I have to try and live.

You run to me? I have to try and live.

I have to try and live. I have to try and live.

I will absorb. I will absorb in one second.

Please, please, please. Please, please, please.

Ah, I trust you. Do you have a move?

Sacks attack! Do you have a move?

But I'm thinking... But I'm thinking...

I trust you. I trust you.

I'm T-S. I'm T-S.

I kick fire. I kick fire.

I actually do not have a Sniper. I kick fire.

Because you need to save me on the Combustion Mandetta. Because you need to save me on the Combustion Mandetta.

Because you need to save me on the Combustion Mandetta. Infernals are another huge cooldown that you can plan around if you track.

Usually, you'll want to line of sight while Infernals are ready, but this can be tricky if you're playing aggressive mid-game and get Infernaled on while you're in the middle of the map.

In this clip, I'm super far from the pillar, but have already planned with my team to use Lifegrip on me when the Warlock uses his Infernals. And so, as soon as he uses them, we grip me back and I just line of sight.

Obviously, you may not be playing with a Priest that can just grip, but the key point here is that being aware of the cooldown on Infernals can allow you to know when you should avoid overextending.

TRACKING CROWD CONTROL

Next, with tracking crowd control, there are two main ways you can benefit from this. The first is that you are able to have a much clearer view on when opposing teams are going to be setting up their kill attempts.

This gives you an opportunity for some counterplay. This clip is a great example of how tracking physical stuns like Kidney Shot can allow you to know exactly when the opposing team is going to try and kill you.

As I see the Rogue's Kidney Shot is coming off cooldown and they've used crowd control on my healer, I know that the enemy Rogue is about to try and stun me. So I use evasion, which allows me to dodge the Kidney Shot and completely counters this kill attempt.

Here, I'm keeping an eye on both Kidney Shot and Bash. As I see Kidney Shot is about to come off cooldown and Bash is ready, this indicates to me that the opposing team is about to set up a kill attempt with some cross CC.

So I use this information to be ready to use my skill. I can also use Blessing of Sanctuary to remove the stun from my healer if they mistime their cross CC, which is exactly what happens.

This time, I have to deal with Leg Sweep, which is an AoE stun that can cross CC me and my teammates. And because Omnibar shows me that it's about to come off cooldown, I use this information to move away from my team, which allows me to avoid the Leg Sweep and freely Blessing of Sanctuary my Shaman.

The other way tracking crowd control helps is you'll have a much better understanding of what tools the opposing team has to peel when you have pressure. Again, giving you an opportunity for some counterplay.

For example here, I'm pushed in pressuring the Windwalker Monk and want to play super aggressive in this opener. Looking at Omnibar lets me know that both Monks have Leg Sweep ready, and with the Windwalker Monk on low health, it's extremely likely that a Leg Sweep will be used to peel.

So just as me and my healer are about to stack up for a Leg Sweep, I press Evasion which allows me to dodge the Leg Sweep and save my trinket for an aggressive play later on.

On top of stuns, Omnibar can also help classes with the ability to use the skill to counter the Warlock with abilities to reflect or immune spells to avoid magical crowd control. For example, Shamans with Grounding Totem, Warlocks with Nether Ward and Warriors with Spell Reflection.

Here I've just swapped to the Destruction Warlock and I'm going for the kill. I can see that Immortal Coil is about to come off cooldown, this means that the Warlock is almost certain to use Coil here, and so by using my Spell Reflection, I'm able to reflect the Coil and score a kill.

TRACKING DEFENSIVES

Finally, with the remaining cooldowns, you can orchestrate your team's gameplan by making decisions and kill attempts based on the defensive cooldowns available to the enemy team. In this clip, I've got my crusade fully stacked and want to try to kill the rest of the druid who doesn't have a trinket.

As I start moving towards the druid, he uses Dispel on Vampiric Touch, which sets me up perfectly to stun him in caster form. The DK then stuns me, but because I know he doesn't have anti-magic zone ready to save his druid, I decide to use Divine Shield on the stun and proceed to score the kill.

Again, I want to kill this rest of druid. Looking at Omnibar, we can see that all of the druid's and demon hunter's defensives are on cooldown.

That's Barkskin, Ironbark, Darkness and Reverse Magic. The only defensive they're about to have available is anti-magic zone in a few seconds.

Okay. So, I use Blind on the Death Knight to prevent him from using anti-magic zone on my Vendetta, and my team goes all in for the kill, using everything we have as we know there's nothing they can do to stop this kill from happening.

Another game plan you can have is setting up a safe triple Melodict kill attempt once a team has used their abilities which can immune or reflect a Melodict. Here we can see that Grounding Totem is on cooldown, which means that my team is free to use 3 Melodicts per turn.

I'm going to take the kill and go back to the back and score an easy kill on this Shaman. And speaking of Grounding Totem, tracking this plays a huge part in landing magical crowd control on Shamans.

Knowing that Grounding Totem is on cooldown here lets me safely push for a stun on the rest of Shaman while the DK is low, which forces his trinket and leads us to scoring a kill when my monk uses Paralysis on the Shaman later on.

I'm going to save the game now, and I'm going to go back to the usual setup stuff for my team. And that's it, if any of you are ready to watch the game, I might want to make a special video about my new skills, I have a super fun series of videos for you, I'm really looking forward to seeing you making your own.

See you soon. R.I.P Grounding Totem That was really, really good.

I'll be back. See you next time.

Thank you and have a great day. Bye.

HOW TO SET UP OMNIBAR

Alright, so with that all out of the way, we're going to show you exactly how to set up Omnibar with our recommended settings. Now there are three ways you can set up Omnibar.

The first is just like the OG interrupt bar, which is to have a single bar. Although if you're planning on tracking more than just interrupts, we do not recommend setting up your Omnibar like this.

Why? Well, if you have interrupts and a bunch of different abilities all being tracked on the same bar, you end up making it slower for you to instantly know which abilities are on cooldown.

What you should instead do is have at least two bars set up like this. Here you can see that we have a bar dedicated to interrupts and another bar above it dedicated to other abilities.

This allows you to know which interrupts are on cooldown by looking straight at your bar dedicated to interrupts without having to look through a bar that has all the different cooldowns scrambled together. You can take this a step further by creating multiple bars for the different types of abilities you need to track.

For example here, we can see that interrupts are tracked at the bottom, crowd control is tracked on the left, offensive are tracked on the right, and other cooldowns are tracked just above the interrupts. This allows you to find the exact type of cooldown you're looking for in a fraction of a second.

Also something else you can do which we recommend for newer players is to enable the option to show unused icons.

This will allow you to know exactly which abilities you're tracking are going to be available to the opposing team based on the classes they're playing, although we would only recommend enabling this setting for one to two of your bars at most.

We feel you can benefit most from enabling this setting for the crowd control bar, as it will remind you of which crowd control abilities the opposing team has ready, giving you an opportunity for some counterplay.

For example, being reminded of a monk's leg sweep will help you try to avoid the leg sweep by outranging it. Finally, if you would like to know exactly which abilities you should be tracking, check out the google doc linked in the description below.

Okay that's it for this one guys. Let us know in the comments below if this guide was helpful and if you would like to see more add-on guides like this.

Thanks for watching and we'll see you next time.