We’re making improvements to Nameplates, adding Damage Meters to the base UI, integrating boss alerts into our raid design in Midnight, and more.
19 Likes
The ui interface glow up could be useful for those who wants it on.
1 Like
Cool, dunno how it compares to DBM yet but the transition will be rough.
3 Likes
Those new nameplates are so much better.
3 Likes
Not seeing it as an option for Boss Alerts or ever mentioned, so I’ll request it here. Please support bar-style alerts. I know timelines is popular, but bar-style is the default for combat timers and a format I, and I’m sure many others, have grown accustomed to.
5 Likes
those nameplates suck, hopefully you don’t break plater
7 Likes
Seems like a good start, especially the nameplates.
I do think the Boss Alerts need some major work.
The timeline style isn’t for everyone. The large majority of BigWigs and DBM users are accustomed to a progress bar format. It would be great to have that option.
5 Likes
Good 1st step.
are they though? most people I know use a WA to turn them into a timeline. I wonder if blizz had some data on that, idk.
That’s what makes me nervous. Boss fights these days are designed with addons like DBM in mind. I think it’s good that Blizzard is trying to bake some of the addons into their own UI, but I’m a bit wary of how the end product will end up vs what we already have in DBM.
3 Likes
The subtle texture tweak on “important lethal casts” really doesn’t solve the problem. In 12+ Mythic Plus — the level where many players push for 3000 rating and the seasonal mount — you’re often dealing with 10+ mobs and several casters at once. In that chaos, it’s still nearly impossible to instantly spot which cast is truly dangerous.
The update feels like it only works if you blow up a single nameplate 5x larger in a blog screenshot. That’s not the reality of actual gameplay.
Why not follow the approach already proven by the community? Almost every serious M+ player uses Plater or similar profiles that change nameplate and castbar colors by enemy type and interrupt priority. There’s a reason for that: color differentiation works. Red/yellow/grey as the baseline is far too rigid — hundreds of popular Plater profiles exist because players need more granularity to read fights at a glance.
Right now, this solution looks conservative and disconnected from real gameplay. Adopting color-based differentiation should be the minimum standard if Blizzard wants the default UI to even start competing with Plater — not to mention exploring more creative native features with better FPS performance that addons can’t easily achieve.
15 Likes
I like the direction of these changes. Something plater does that i am interested to hear about and whether it will be implemented or not, along with the reasoning behind is being able to colour different types of mobs.
For example a lot of common plater profiles will use different colour nameplates for Casters, Lieutenants, Ranged archers & Melee frontals or Tank busters just to name a couple of broad types of mobs.
Having this colour setup is especially helpful when approaching a pull knowing at a glance it’s mob make up. As great as some of the creature models are i don’t think they are always distinct enough to rely on that to accomplish the same thing.
2 Likes
I’m excited for these new UI changes. I would love a homogenous look across the UI. I do think that having a way to change the color of mobs as “normal”, “important”, “Urgent” is good idea too.
Maybe a bestiary that has all the mobs in a dungeon so we we can mark targets in for ourselves and make it shareable?
1 Like
The simplest implementation i would think would be some broad classification of mob types that blizz can embed in their data. Then we have a simple colour control for those broad groups.
I doubt they would want to go to the extent of making every mob able to be listed and made a different colour. It could be universally applicable outside of m+ too. Running into a delve and seeing that something is a Caster or a Lieutenant, raid trash and even out in the world questing.
It’s something that i didnt understand how valuable it was until i started using it.
1 Like
They did say raiding is going in the route of more accessible and easier than before.
As someone who’s gone all this time without a nameplate addon and hasn’t used an encounter addon like DBM since WoD, I’m pretty excited to finally see what these UI updates might look like!
My thoughts:
Nameplates
In dire need of improvement. I’m sure this is a first step, but it’s kinda useless for me if it’s just more red bars.
We need to be able to choose between aggro colors on the name, or health. Yes, the option, not just 1 of them. If I’m a tank I want names to be red if I don’t have aggro. If I’m a DPS I want the names to be red when I do have aggro.
I need to be able to say “health bar colors are connected to X”:
- Aura(s) being present
- Aggro state
- custom or predefined color based on mob classification
I need to be able to say “mob name colors are connected to Y”:
- Aura(s) being present
- Aggro state
- custom or predefined color based on mob classification
Auras
We need at minimum an aura filter. I don’t want every random debuff being shown. On Destruction warlock I only want to see my curses and wither or immolate, don’t care about the rest.
Mob coloring
If I can’t see the difference between a high prio nameplate, a random non-elite add, a caster, a tank buster mob, a mini-boss, a boss etc, I will just see a sea of red and be unable to see which mob is which. It’ll take me too long to read names, and we simply don’t have the time with the current “gogogogo” mentality and required reaction speeds.
In PvP we have class colors being shown, so we can expect a certain type of fight, this should be done in PvE as well. Can be done through a predefined criteria, can be done based on the spells/abilities a mob has, or perhaps even custom like plater. No colors, no default nameplates, this is a hard demand.
Health numbers missing
There’s no visualization of health numbers or percentages. This is mandatory to add, not even going to bother without.
Cast targets are missing
If I can’t see who is being targeted by a bolt, I don’t know if that interrupt is more important or not. If I see I’m being targeted by 3 bolts, I for sure will use a defensive. This is also a dealbreaker for me.
“Damage” meter
Damage and healing is certainly useful to know, but other than bragging rights and possibly self-improvement: pointless.
We need to be able to track a ton more stuff:
- aura uptime
- (avoidable) damage taken
- damage absorbed
- deaths, including a snapshot of why and when
- interrupts
- cc
- cc breaks
- etc
Without that information a DPS meter is useless. Details is an incredibly useful tool to view all this information, and without this it would be near impossible to see how you can improve.
That said, if this information was to be added, we should be able to query this information through the Lua API so we can create custom summaries and displays. As example see the “Details! Mythic+” addon, which gathers a ton of information from details and saves it so you can look back at your previous runs and actually compare in-game.
Boss mods
Cool. Just please please please give us a UI element for important buffs and debuffs, and not just encounters, also trash. It’s cool to have a timeline, but if I can’t clearly see fight specific buffs or debuffs, then I still need a WA to show me these. Examples being:
- Vexie oil debuff
- Vexie holding the oil to throw
- Difference between fractillus wall and clear (yes this is actually well visible in-game, but I keep forgetting which is which in the heat of the moment)
- Having the hunt on you in the dh fight
- whether or not you’re carrying a mass orb in the dimensius fight
- whether or not you’re safe inside a mechanic, like in the dimensius last phase, purple puddles or even standing in DH darkness.
Weak Auras for this do not play the game for us, and especially the buffs are extremely hard to find in the sea of debuffs on my screen. I also have my debuffs moved closer to my character so I can properly see them, but when playing like M+ the challenger’s might or whatever it’s called is always visible there.
We just need a simple “emphasized” aura slot for both buffs and debuffs. This would also be perfect for “private” auras if they remain a concept.
Utilize existing elements to integrate with your boss mods
We know that a specific mob will phase at say 50%, say priory last boss. Could be a 30% health triggering a flee, or an 80%, 60%, 40%, 20% summoning adds mechanic. I currently use a health marker mod for plater to show me those, and this information is huge.
If you combine this with the in-game boss mods it would help so many players with knowing when something phases, especially when the phase happens on different moments on different difficulties. We all know when it phases eventually, but it’s annoying to have different people call out different numbers, or having to write it down or memorize it ourselves. Just add it.
8 Likes
Will this also track other numbers like Healing, Interrupts, & Dispells
3 Likes
Damage meter needs “always show self”. I have no interest in seeing a list of all players, I want my own dps and my rank that’s it
1 Like
Their preview image is practically microscopic, but I was able to spot the option to show health values in the settings window. Presumably they left it off of the example plates because they were focused on showing off the different ‘styles’ and on the cast bar, but the option is currently there to show health.