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Overview -
Ease of Use -
Setup -
Customization -
Features -
Performance
- Support
- Review
Score
 Overview:
MiniBuff
(created by Rim)
is a profile buffing utility which is designed to only buff only
yourself and not other people. This means it lets you save different
settings for each situation. For example you can have one profile for
hunting Olthoi, another for hunting tuskers, and another for casting a full set of protections that can cover everything.
Requirements:
*
Spell Filter (1.4.0.0 or higher)
*
 Latest
Imp Filter
V2
* latest worldfilter (included with decal)
Ease of use: This is one of those rare programs where every
feature is exactly where you'd expect it to be. The interface is well
layed out, easy to understand, and very flexible. There is a tab for
each magic school and also for prebuffs and a config tab to adjust how
you want it to recover health/stamina/mana. Within each tab it lists the
items or skills to buff and there are arrows next to each selection
allowing you to move it up in the list to adjust the order in which the
spells are cast. It's easy to adjust the level of each spell is cast
just by clicking on the spell or item's name. I did find it odd to see
the life protections were not arranged in a similar fashion to most
buffing programs. Instead of having a picture of each life protection to
click on, the panel was arranged exactly like all the others. This isn't
necessarily bad because it's always easier to learn how to use a program
if there's consistency across the application interface. The only thing
I can really fault it for is lack of documentation and no help files or
tutorials on the author's web page.
Setup: The
author didn't exactly allow users to create profiles very quickly. Here
are some changes I feel would improve this.
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It would have been awesome if there was a
predefined profile for "use current settings". That way you wouldn't
absolutely have to save a custom buff profile if you didn't want to.
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You have to click each spell several times to get it to the
desired casting level. This could have been improved by adding a default
spell level option to the config tab. Along with this it would have been
nice to have spells increment to a higher level when clicked instead of
decreasing in level - that way you could quickly adjust an existing
profile once your character advanced enough that they could cast the
next level spells.
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It would be nice to have a button on the
critter panel to hide untrained skills. If this were selected then the
application should still keep items that are commonly buffed when
untrained such as arcane lore, leadership, melee defense, and missile
defense.
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It would be nice if the first item in the life panel
were set up like a piece of armor in the item panel where it lists each
protection side-by-side and you can click them on or off a lot faster
and easier. The regeneration, rejuvenation, and mana renewal options
could remain as-is.
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The item panel could use a button for "add
wielded" to add everything you are wearing all at once.
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I'd like
it if MiniBuff were smart enough to prevent unenchantable items from
being added to the item list and then display an error message similar
to what it does if you attempt to add a jewellery item.
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It would
work a lot better if MiniBuff moved casters to the beginning of the list
or allowed you to manually move items up or down the list once they've
been added.
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I feel the
config button could be moved next to the settings panel as most
people would only require these settings to be unique per character
and not on each saved profile.
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It would be a
lot faster for me if MiniBuff hid saved profiles I had created for other
characters.
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It would be great if there was an option to load
an existing buff profile under the settings tab so I could make
adjustments to it and save the new version without having to start all
over from scratch.
There are some really helpful features. The way item spells are
displayed is brilliant and allows faster configuration than
Nerfus Buffus
II. It's also really nice to identify equipment by seeing a picture
of the item in the list instead of dealing with GUID numbers to tell the
difference between items of like name. Additionally MiniBuff
automatically displays the correct item spell options based on the type
of item that was added to the list whether it be yourself, armor,
weapon, or caster.
Customization:
MiniBuff gives you a fair amount of flexibility. You can select various
prebuff spells, change the casting level of each spell, the order in
which they are cast, and the exact spells that are cast on each
individual item. This flexibility was pretty nice because I was able to
set up a run buff profile where I cast everything at one level lower
than my hunting buffs to save time and costs. The ability to customize
mana regeneration is rather limited but it did let me limit it from
casting level 7 stamina to mana and revitalize which helps poor people
like me burn up fewer plats. It also doesn't let you manually cast
portions of one magic school before doing another magic school, which is
a shame because there is no way to get the application to cast hermetic
link on your buffing wand early on in the buff cycle. This program
pretty much requires you to have life magic trained as it doesn't offer
alternative ways to regain mana.
Features: Before I get into the feature list I wanted to say this. If
MiniBuff were ever improved to allow on-the-fly buffing as I mentioned
in the setup section of this review, I think it would be great to add
the ability to buff other people as well. This is important because I
don't always keep my spell bar equipped to handle buffing others
(especially on my mage because of all the combat spells I need handy)
and having a utility which offers this feature would be very helpful.
The easiest way I see to add this feature to the user interface is to
rename the settings tab to "self" and then add a similar tab that said
"other".
Regaining mana: MiniBuff supports regaining mana by using life magic to
cast health to mana, stamina to mana, and revitalize. It doesn't support
using Ulgrim's stein, Elysa's Wonderous Orb, laying down to regain
stamina, using healing kits, using health/stamina/mana foods, or using
health/stamina/mana elixirs.
Saving settings: MiniBuff only supports loadable pre-saved profiles.
Equipment changes: MiniBuff does not support any equipment changes. This
applies to prebuff, postbuff, or during the buff cycle. It would've been
nice if it at least allowed you to set default buffing wands for each
magic school.
New game features: MiniBuff supports casting hermetic link/mystics
blessing on wands. It also supports casting banes on your paper doll. It
does not yet support casting defender on wands or any of the new
fellowship spells.
Buffing other players: MiniBuff does not support casting spells on other
players.
Output options: MiniBuff displays all of the names of the spells
remaining in the buffing queue and even allows you to remove a spell
from the queue without aborting the buff cycle. It also displays the
total number of spells in queue, the number of remaining spells, and the
total casting time.
Other features: MiniBuff can buff non-equipped items which makes it
possible to put on mage armor to boost your magic skills while you buff
everything else. It also has an option to log out when done. It doesn't
have the ability to play a sound when done.
Performance: In this test I had my mage cast my usual hunting
buffs of 38 spells. It cast things in this order: prebuffs, creature,
item, life. Unfortunately it didn't cast hermetic link on my buffing
wand until it got into the item spells. Also the timing was off and it
kept trying to cast when I wasn't ready in an attempt to go faster but I
found the repeating noise it makes to be pretty annoying. Altogether my
buff cycle took 2:57 to complete. The program also has a turbo mode that
uses the w key to break the animation cycle to cast faster if you're
facing into a corner. I tested this out and my buffing actually took
about the same and finished in 2:48. In all tests with my various
characters I found mana management was pretty good. I didn't get a
chance to see how it handled situations where you might not know the
spell it's trying to cast. There does appear to be a bug that appears
when I added myself into the item buff panel that prevented me from
removing any undesired banes from the line item that listed myself.
Support: It's tough finding any information about this program.
Although it's been recently updated to support casting banes on your
paper doll there hasn't been many new features added in a long time.
The author doesn't have a web page dedicated to this application but you
can ask questions and get help from the author through an AC1 plugins
forum on a bulletin board hosted by his gaming guild. This program
requires the latest
Spell
Filter,
Imp Filter
V2, and Worldfilter.
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