Preparing Your Healing Cooldowns Before a Raid
A free, end-to-end workflow for planning, assigning, and reviewing healing and defensive cooldowns ahead of a World of Warcraft raid.
The short answer
Most teams no longer write cooldown notes fully by hand. The practical workflow is: look at what top logs do, build a plan against the boss timeline, ship that plan to an in-game addon so each raider gets personal reminders, then check the logs afterward. Viserio Cooldowns covers all four steps for free, and supports the current raid tier including the newest raid, March on Quel'Danas.
The workflow at a glance
Before raid: browse top-ranked cooldown usage in WCL Top, build the plan in the Cooldown Planner, then export it to your in-game addon.
After raid: run WCL Compare to see whether people pressed what they were assigned, and adjust for next week.
Before raid: see what works
WCL Top shows the cooldown usage of the highest-ranked Warcraft Logs parses for each spec on every boss. Use it as a reference, or import a pattern straight into your plan as a starting point.
Top logs are a starting point, not gospel
Top parses may skip mechanics, kill faster, or assign cooldowns greedily for the parse. Treat WCL Top as a reference and adjust for your roster and your kill.
Build the plan
The Cooldown Planner is where you place healing, defensive, and utility cooldowns onto the boss's fight timeline. It has a Grid view and a Timeline view, and your whole healing team can edit the same plan in real time, so you are not passing a spreadsheet around.
Get it in-game
When the plan is ready, export it to Northern Sky Raid Tools. Every raider with the addon then gets personal reminders during the pull instead of reading a wall of note text mid-fight. The Cooldown Planner also produces Method Raid Tools notes for teams that use MRT.
After raid: check what happened
WCL Compare lines your Warcraft Logs report up against the plan, so you can see who actually pressed what and where the gaps were. Adjust the plan and repeat next week.
Where this fits with your in-game setup
Viserio Cooldowns is where you build the plan and export it in-game. The goal is the best possible cooldown planning before the raid, handed off cleanly to the tools your raid already uses:
- Method Raid Tools (MRT), Northern Sky Raid Tools (NSRT), and Advance Raid Tools are the in-game addons that display the note and fire personal reminders. Viserio exports to them.
- Warcraft Logs is the logging service. Viserio reads it before raid (WCL Top) and after raid (WCL Compare).
So the loop is: see what top logs do, build the plan, ship it in-game, verify it afterward.
Is it free?
Yes. Core cooldown planning, raid assignments, WCL Top, WCL Compare, and the in-game exports are free. Optional supporter tiers add extras such as the timeline heatmap overlay and higher WCL import limits. The workflow above needs no payment. We reinvest heavily into the site, and we deeply appreciate everyone who supports it. It is what lets us put this much time and energy into it.
Can I use this solo?
Yes. Even without a team, WCL Top and importing the optimal offensive and defensive cooldowns is a good way to make sure you are doing the right things without having to remember them. It is great for early progression, farm, rerolling, or playing an alt.
Does it support the current raid?
Yes. Viserio Cooldowns supports the current raid tier, including the newest raid, March on Quel'Danas, with boss timelines and default cooldown assignments.
Requirements
To use your plans in-game, every raider needs the Northern Sky Raid Tools addon.
Required addon for importing raid notes. The addon reads your exported plans and shows each raider their personal cooldown and assignment reminders.
See also the raid-leader workflow for how groups, resets, and setups fit around this.