World of Warcraft™

What would you want the most?

Let's say someone offered to write a healing/raid frames mod specifically for you.

- What elements of your current mod (or the default) would you not want to live without?

- Are there any elements of other mods (or the default) that you wish were incorporated into your own?

- Is there anything that irritates you about your mod (or the default) that you'd like to change?

- Is there any type of (non-cheating, ToU-compliant) functionality that you wish existed in a raid frame addon, but that (to your knowledge) doesn't currently exist?

If you use the default, feel free to say things like "I like that I don't need to update" or "I like not worrying about bugs," but know that it's not really helping me :)

Something that default has, but I've noticed a couple raidframes addons do not have, is the ability to display class colors in their life bar.
For example, a paladin's box would be pink, dks would be red, etc.
It's useful in telling who's who with a glance, especially if you're running 10m and you have only one or two of a class.
No, this isn't very helpful.
Personally, I wish you could focus target two players at a time. For fights like Ultraxion, I like to focus the boss, but I want to be able to keep an eye on the tank(s) as well. A little box on my screen does not provide me with enough information on tank status to keep me comfortable (what [de]buffs does he have?). I'm not even sure if it's possible to do this, but it would sure be handy, especially since I can't be targeting the tank 100% of the time.

Something that keeps track of a bosses swing timer and spell casts in a more healer friendly manner.

01/09/2012 01:06 PMPosted by Kiango

Personally, I wish you could focus target two players at a time. For fights like Ultraxion, I like to focus the boss, but I want to be able to keep an eye on the tank(s) as well. A little box on my screen does not provide me with enough information on tank status to keep me comfortable (what [de]buffs does he have?). I'm not even sure if it's possible to do this, but it would sure be handy, especially since I can't be targeting the tank 100% of the time.

Thanks! This is definitely possible (Vuhdo has an implementation).

01/09/2012 01:06 PMPosted by Herbalpuff

Something that keeps track of a bosses swing timer and spell casts in a more healer friendly manner.

Can you be more specific? What would this look like? How would it be integrated into the raid frames? I'm visualizing a cast bar/swing timer placed above the raid frames, but that's something you can do using Quartz (the cast bar part, anyway - I don't know if a target swing timer is even possible).

Yeah IDK

Just something to help out visualizing the damage that is going to happen rather than using health bars to determine where damage has occurred.

Some kind of target of target frame for tanks that shows relevant tank target info for healers. I'm somewhat of a minimalist. I use a macro instead of a mail addon and things like that.

I didn't know you could use quartz for anything other than your own swing timer.

Alright, I'll start thinking about it :)

01/09/2012 01:23 PMPosted by Herbalpuff

I didn't know you could use quartz for anything other than your own swing timer.

Yeah, it's got great customizable cast bars for player, target, focus, and pet.

Sparkles.

Seriously. When I cleanse someone I want the unit frame to sparkle. When someone is cursed I want the unit frame to become corroded and dark or when poisoned their unit frame should drip with venom. If I'm going to stare at it, it should at least look interesting but still convey useful information. Just in a pretty way.

Other than that all add ons have already covered everything I could think of that I need.

Ease of setup and buff/debuff tracking are ultra-high priorities. Those are the things that piss me off the most about existing addons.

(Yes, I'm contemplating coding an addon from scratch because I find it too irritating to set up the ones other people coded. Shut up.)

Sparkles...sparkles sound fun. Once upon a time, I used X-Perl, and it had sparkles. I may have to create some :)

The Blizzard raid frames have 90% of what I want. I like to see icons, I like that they line up in their respective corner (buffs bottom right, debuffs bottom left, dispellable icon on the top right). I like being able to pull out the main tanks, I like the horizontal health/power bars.

What I would like is a cast bar option, maybe make the mana bar taller and overlay the casting spell.

Also, some transparency. This is my biggest gripe with the Blizzard raid frames, there is no transparency, in 10 mans I don't miss much, but in 25's there is a blind spot large enough to fit three of Rag's meteors.

One might say just get one of those ui's that resizes the view and place the bars in the bottom of the screen, but I despise having my mouse so far out of the center of the screen, along with forcing the eye to choose between the surrounding area or healing.

More customization wouldn't hurt either for width/height.

Actually here is something I thought of. Scaling. I would like to tell my raid frame addon This is your space to fill on the screen and then for however many party members I have the raid frames would scale to fit into that space.

I haven't used the default setting in Healbot since I installed it. So, I guess flexibility in layout customization is very important to me. (I just can't stand green boxes/cells.)

I only use class specific colors in text/name, but not for the whole box/cell, because I have a color scheme for debuffs. For example, purple for Magic to be dispelled, green for Disease to be cleansed, and bright red for very bad things to be dealt with at the highest priority. In this aspect, I feel that Healbot is more flexible, easier to set up than Vuhdo, though I'm suspicious that the fanciness may add some delays.

What I like about Healbot is that all good buffs shown on the right side, all bad debuffs shown on the left side. This left vs. right is by default, I believe. And, I can pick and choose what good buffs I want to show for each class. In Vuhdo, I just ran out corners/spots for the buffs/debuffs that I want to track.

What I like in Vuhdo/Grid that Healbot doesn't have (or I just don't know how) is, to limit the number of characters displayed for player's name. Those 15-character names just took up so much room. Obviously, you can't kick someone because your healer thinks his name is too long to mess up her Healbot (LOL... just kidding).

Two things I want that Grid doesn't currently support:

Conditional highlights: i.e.: light up the frame only if debuff A and B are on the target.
Spell id based debuff detection/sorting: Not being able to see both the stack number and duration of Deep Corruption, just because they are different debuffs with the same name, is annoying.

Most of what others have said. I currently use VuHdo, and prefer a minimalist look for most of my addons. Things I cannot / dont want to do without are:

Class Color Bars
Mana / Energy Bars
Arrow showing direction of the player when they are out of range
Customization!!! (My tastes change, so I like options)
Timers on my hots when they are close to over
Ability to link specific actions / spells to mouse clicks


I would like to see cast bars, but mainly on the target frame.. Though I could see some use in a cast bar on friendly targets also.. But not sure I would use that.. I would use a cast bar on the target frame though!

01/09/2012 02:29 PMPosted by Koban

What I would like is a cast bar option, maybe make the mana bar taller and overlay the casting spell.

Hm. You're saying you'd like to see what your raid members are casting? I can see the appeal in theory, but I don't know if it can be done, and I think the result might be unappealing. But it's an interesting thought.

01/09/2012 02:29 PMPosted by Koban

I like to see icons, I like that they line up in their respective corner (buffs bottom right, debuffs bottom left, dispellable icon on the top right).

I'm unlikely to do things this way as a default (my vision for HoTs is free static placement of user-preselected buffs), but if a significant number of people do prefer the "mash all the buffs in a pile in one corner" display, I'll try to include it as an option. Thanks :)

Dispellable debuff icons (with custom placement) will definitely be included.

Also, some transparency. This is my biggest gripe with the Blizzard raid frames, there is no transparency, in 10 mans I don't miss much, but in 25's there is a blind spot large enough to fit three of Rag's meteors.

01/09/2012 02:29 PMPosted by Koban

More customization wouldn't hurt either for width/height.

These can absolutely be done. Sky's the limit on custom sizing/color/transparency. Thank you :)

01/09/2012 02:32 PMPosted by Wasselin

Actually here is something I thought of. Scaling. I would like to tell my raid frame addon This is your space to fill on the screen and then for however many party members I have the raid frames would scale to fit into that space.

I really like this idea! Thanks!

I haven't used the default setting in Healbot since I installed it. So, I guess flexibility in layout customization is very important to me. (I just can't stand green boxes/cells.)

I only use class specific colors in text/name, but not for the whole box/cell, because I have a color scheme for debuffs. For example, purple for Magic to be dispelled, green for Disease to be cleansed, and bright red for very bad things to be dealt with at the highest priority. In this aspect, I feel that Healbot is more flexible, easier to set up than Vuhdo, though I'm suspicious that the fanciness may add some delays.

I agree on all of the above, and all of it is important to me too.

What I like about Healbot is that all good buffs shown on the right side, all bad debuffs shown on the left side. This left vs. right is by default, I believe. And, I can pick and choose what good buffs I want to show for each class. In Vuhdo, I just ran out corners/spots for the buffs/debuffs that I want to track.

I had the same problem with Vuhdo. I don't intend to take the same approach as Healbot/default frames because I don't like random resorting of buffs, but there will be a *much* larger number of indicators available (I may just let the user decide how many) and they will be individually positioned rather than limited to preconfigured layouts.

01/09/2012 02:39 PMPosted by Jesminia

What I like in Vuhdo/Grid that Healbot doesn't have (or I just don't know how) is, to limit the number of characters displayed for player's name. Those 15-character names just took up so much room. Obviously, you can't kick someone because your healer thinks his name is too long to mess up her Healbot (LOL... just kidding).

Easily done :) Thanks.

01/09/2012 02:39 PMPosted by Mint

Conditional highlights: i.e.: light up the frame only if debuff A and B are on the frame.

I like this. I will do this.

01/09/2012 02:39 PMPosted by Mint

Spell id based debuff detection/sorting: Not being able to see both the stack number and duration of Deep Corruption is annoying.

Vuhdo does this, so it can be done. I will do this as well.

Most of what others have said. I currently use VuHdo, and prefer a minimalist look for most of my addons. Things I cannot / dont want to do without are:

Class Color Bars
Mana / Energy Bars
Arrow showing direction of the player when they are out of range
Customization!!! (My tastes change, so I like options)
Timers on my hots when they are close to over
Ability to link specific actions / spells to mouse clicks


I would like to see cast bars, but mainly on the target frame.. Though I could see some use in a cast bar on friendly targets also.. But not sure I would use that.. I would use a cast bar on the target frame though!

I will do all of this. Although I haven't figured out how the arrows work. I hate trying to read Vuhdo's code...I need to go look at the Grid direction arrow plugin and see if it's more readable.

01/09/2012 02:32 PMPosted by Wasselin

Actually here is something I thought of. Scaling. I would like to tell my raid frame addon This is your space to fill on the screen and then for however many party members I have the raid frames would scale to fit into that space.

This. I would love to be able to make a section of my screen dedicated to raid frames, and then have them automatically adjust their size according to the size of the raid. Since I am no longer only a 10 man raider (hello LFR.)

Oh, and also: I love the AOE advice in Vuhdo, it is one of those things that really helps with my raid healing. :D

01/09/2012 03:01 PMPosted by Malrius

Oh, and also: I love the AOE advice in Vuhdo, it is one of those things that really helps with my raid healing. :D

Yeah, this is another one I haven't figured out how to do, but would like to :)

Posted by Koban
What I would like is a cast bar option, maybe make the mana bar taller and overlay the casting spell.

Hm. You're saying you'd like to see what your raid members are casting? I can see the appeal in theory, but I don't know if it can be done, and I think the result might be unappealing. But it's an interesting thought.

My pitbull raid frames set up had player cast bars and the name of what they are casting but it honestly wasn't that useful for me.

I should add that you could take my scaling idea further. Name too long? Scale down the font size. Too many debuffs? Scale down the indicators. Only one debuff? It can be bigger. etc...

Posted by Koban
What I would like is a cast bar option, maybe make the mana bar taller and overlay the casting spell.

Hm. You're saying you'd like to see what your raid members are casting? I can see the appeal in theory, but I don't know if it can be done, and I think the result might be unappealing. But it's an interesting thought.

My pitbull raid frames set up had player cast bars and the name of what they are casting but it honestly wasn't that useful for me.

I should add that you could take my scaling idea further. Name too long? Scale down the font size. Too many debuffs? Scale down the indicators. Only one debuff? It can be bigger. etc...

Oh, good. I know Pitbull has the option, I just didn't know if it actually worked. (There are some things that don't - for instance, you can tell it to give the target name on cast bars other than the player cast bar, but it doesn't actually work because that information isn't exposed.)

I'd like to do intelligent scaling, but I'm not entirely sure how it will impact performance. Performance is a key concern - I don't know how close I can get to Vuhdo's functionality, for instance, without introducing Vuhdo's lag.