Yeah look as a healer main for quite some time getting rid of healers ability to customize our raid frames and make work in our way that clicks for us is sort of really really bad.
If you main dps or tank this is just another note in the patch notes but for healers this is going to cause a lot of people to probably just give up playing the role.
If you go look at 25 different healer streams you’ll almost certainly see 25 very different frames/tracking etc.
Obviously not trying to overreact here but my frames are something I’ve built over 6 years of raiding at a CE/HOF level and losing it really not a vibe. Curious to how other healers are thinking about this topic.
I’m rather old so I sort of need everything I can to be able to function as a helper member of my raid.
Things like:
Debuffs changing frame colors based on what they have (Helps with dispels)
Raid frames changing colors when they have rejuv/riptide/atonement on them
It’s pretty awful, these UI makeover is impacting healers so much more than any other role. If you look at any DPS ui they more or less use the same one and dont even care about player frames.
I’m not playing actively at the moment but hoping to come back in Midnight.
I’ve spent 20 years getting my healing UI exactly how I like it. I know there’s been a lot of work on the base UI, but it still doesn’t do what I need it to do. I use colour-coded text for HoTs and various coloured indicators (whole of frame, border, texts, corners, indicator dots…) for a range of other things. Yes, things are getting pruned so there will apparently be less to follow on the frames, but I still want to be able to use the frames that I have used for the past two decades.
If that kind of customisation (which is in no way cheesing anything, just displaying buffs and debuffs in a different way on the frame) is no longer possible, then that is a huge oof and would make me reconsider playing.
Still waiting on confirmation from addon authors on exactly what’s going to break moving forward. Having no control over the display of personal buffs would be strange.
They did say they would be working on some solution for raid frames so here’s to hoping they can find the right solution but they’re also making the role much easier and giving players the tools ingame necessary to heal so it could also open the role to a lot more players.
It’s a real good thing we are in favor of healers not doing any damage, folks can do 1/64th the damage of a dps while spending 1/4 of their gcds healing with 2 buttons. Riveting experience.
The one thing I’ve seen from an addon dev was that the addon used to give WoW screen reader functionality will be affected. Take that as you will, given they didn’t give a lot of specifics.
(Maybe related, that addon dev had gotten a message from Blizzard asking for feedback on how users of the addon wanted things like self HP amount or buff presence to be read out by their screen reader.)
If I can’t customize my raidframes to look the way they do now, I’ll probably stop playing. As a healer, raidframes are my entire gameplay. My current setup (Grid2) is:
Vertical health bars (up/down, square, very small)
HoTs displayed in different corners as colored dots instead of icons
I only play healer, so switching roles is not an option.
At Gamescom, when the nameplate revamp was announced, I briefly spoke to Ion. I mentioned: “With the whole addon overhaul, please don’t forget healers.” He replied: “We won’t—my main is resto shaman.”
Now, with Midnight, it looks like all existing raidframes will break. Blizzard has not provided a replacement that offers comparable functionality. From what I’ve read, porting addons to the new API will be almost a full rewrite. And as a software developer myself, I doubt features like:
Assigning different HoTs to different corners of the frame
Displaying them as colored indicators rather than icons
…will even be possible under the new system.
If Blizzard wants healers to thrive in Midnight, we need either:
Raidframes with the same level of configurability built-in, or
An API that makes these advanced features possible for addon developers.
Without that, I fear many healers will lose the tools that make the role playable.
We’ve been asking since they baselined a terrible implementation of Clique to get an option to only have the click casting bind to work on party frames.
Yet here we are, still without that done. But aye, don’t worry guys! They’re breaking everything and all we have a “trust us, we will deliver a fully built UI experience that rivals 20 years of addon development!” lmfao yeah Ok… everything they add in Midnight I’d put money on being closer to their first attempt at a CD tracker than any actual addon that has had years of development
If Blizzard is just getting rid of combat log access in the API, wouldn’t raid frames have no issue with displaying buffs and debuffs where you want them? I assume there are things in the API to access a targets buffs and debuffs.
Raid frames aren’t parsing the combat log to know if you have a rejuvenation on you.
Pretty sure the entire purpose of this change is to prevent calculation via add-on to trivialize mechanics. Would seem to defeat the purpose if they allowed add-ons access to buff/debuff information, that’s a not uncommon part of mechanics “Do you have debuff, if yes, you need to do a thing”
That’s not what they’re doing. They’re restricting addon access to most/all of the relevant combat info raid frames need to be useful. Not just combat log parsing. Like, addons won’t be able to track buffs/debuffs/cd timers at all.
Going to say “NO” because you’re not using 3rd party addons like Healbot or Vuhdo (which will likely stop functioning if they use real-time combat info that’s being removed from the public API).
Yeah as a long time healer, I can definitely say I will NOT be playing healer if I have to use default Blizzard raid frames. I don’t really enjoy tanking or dps, so I might just quit. A few feature that MUST exist for healers:
White and black listing buffs and debuffs to show on raidframes
Colour bar customization based on conditions (Let me change bar colours based on class, HP, or specific buff/debuffd existing)
Customization of dispell indicators (let me highlight a bar or a boarder when I can dispell)
Vertical/Horizontal bar orientation
Different profiles based on different group sizes.
