I want to highlight a disparity in the useability of raid frames for different healing specialisations in Midnight. To do this, I’ve catalogued every buff that each healer can apply to frames, then categorised some of these buffs as “Relevant”, meaning that I think they are necessary to track. The remaining are, by exclusion, “Irrelevant.”
There is some subjectivity involved in this process, but it also is not totally subjective. Seeing effects like Echo or Atonement is required to play the game, and I would brook no argument to the contrary. On the other hand, an effect like Sacred Weapon for Holy Paladin is currently not tracked on frames (a recent change, I think?), and I’d wager some people think this is a positive step towards removing excess clutter. I actually think it should be trackable. Some people want to see other HoTs, like Renew, or Echo of Light, not for gameplay reasons, but just because, and I think they should have this option. This subjectivity only highlights the need for these things to be customisable at the player’s discretion.
I have not included Mistweaver, as I lack familiarity with the spec. I also have not included external defensives in the results, because the option exists to separate these out and display them in the middle of the frame. As an aside, Guardian Spirit and Life Cocoon currently are not counted as “major defensives” for the purposes of this option, and I think at least Guardian Spirit needs to be. Full spell lists will be included at the bottom of the post, but here are the final tallies, for brevity’s sake. The first number represents the number of buffs that a spec tracks on raid frames and which I believe need to be tracked. The second number is the total number of buffs a spec tracks on raid frames. The third number is the difference between the two, aka the number of Irrelevant buffs that are tracked.
Holy Priest 1, 2, 1
Shaman 2, 3, 1
Discipline 2, 5, 3
Paladin 3, 4, 1
Druid 5, 7, 2
Evoker 6, 12, 6
We should think of this like golf scoring. A higher score in any of these columns is essentially a negative for how a healer will play in Midnight. Needing to track more relevant buffs is bad, because the Midnight UI does not want you to track buffs easily or well. Being shown more buffs is also bad, because it contributes to clutter on the frame and reduces visibility of the health bar. The number in the final column then, obtained by subtracting the first from the second, is bad for obvious reasons. This is how many buffs are potentially cluttering your frames for ostensibly no reason at all.
There is a fourth number, relevant only for Resto Druid and Pres Evoker, which exists because those specialisations’ maximum number of shown buffs exceeds the hard limit of 6 buffs per frame the UI is capable of displaying. This number represents the maximum number of relevant buffs which can be present on a character while remaining invisible to the healer because they have been displaced by irrelevant, or less relevant buffs. Let’s call this the Maximum Relevant Obfuscation, just to be fancy. For Restoration Druid the MRO number is one. Preservation Evoker’s MRO number is six . These numbers do not account for any potential internal system on what buffs should have priority in being displayed, because these systems are internal and obfuscated to me. While situations where all 12 of Pres Evokers applicable buffs are present are obviously unlikely, an MRO score of six means that situations where some amount of relevant information is missing from frames due to overloading will be commonplace.
There is a gulf between specialisations on this chart, with Pres Evoker gapping the competition in every metric. I love Preservation. At this point I am earnestly hoping it is bad in Midnight because I would prefer not to play the only healer that has to deal with this level of UI garbage.
While my deepest hope is that the developers will come around to understanding that information about buffs that my character applies to another character should not be secret, and that raid frame customisability far from conferring a competitive advantage actually levels the playing field by making the game more accessible to players who are visually impaired or otherwise have trouble processing large amounts of information quickly, barring these changes of heart, the framework for a simple buff filtering user interface is already in the game and should be made available as quickly as possible.
A properly curated Cooldown Manager-style drag and drop window where devs decide what buffs it is possible for players to track, and players decide which of these they deem worth tracking would be a huge step in the right direction and is well within reach.
I hesitate even to mention the elephant in the room, but if there are no plans to address these issues on the User Interface front, do specialisations like Resto Druid and Pres Evoker even fit into this new vision for the game, or is the plan, eventually, to bring them in line with the other classes on this list? I sincerely hope this is not the case. UI should follow game design, game design should not be shackled to UI.
I am concerned by the lack of any changes or even word of changes on this front in the nearly four months that feedback has been open, and it is hard not to reach the conclusion that on this issue developers have decided they simply know better than the players. That would be a mistake, and to double down and leave raid frames in their current state for the foreseeable future would be a graver mistake. I obviously welcome being proved wrong on this front.
Final disclaimer: this is not a competition, and the fact I think that the state of Blizzard frames is particularly bad for Evoker doesn’t mean I think it’s fine for your class. I hope it’s clear I think things need to change for everyone. Post over. Below are all of the spells/buffs I included in my tally. Maybe I missed some. “Relevant” spells are in bold. Spells separated by a / are mutually exclusive for one reason or another and are counted only once.
Holy Priest - Prayer of Mending, Power Infusion
Shaman - Riptide, Earthshield, Heroism/Bloodlust
Discipline Priest - Atonement, Power Word: Shield/Void Shield, Divine Aegis, Power Word: Barrier, Power Infusion
Paladin - Beacon of Light/Faith/Virtue, Beacon of the Savior, Holy Bulwark/Dawnlight, Eternal Flame
Druid - Rejuvenation/Empowered Rejuvenation, Germination, Regrowth, Lifebloom, Wild Growth, Stampeding Roar, Innervate
Evoker - Echo, Reversion, Echoed Reversion, Dream Breath, Echoed Dream Breath, Lifebind, Temporal Anomaly, Zephyr, Dream Flight, Rewind, Fury of the Aspects, Reverberations/Enkindle