Hi, I’ve been playing the Alpha and I noticed Nameplates got a pretty big glowup. I noticed some issues while questing on my warlock.
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I am playing Hellcaller, which means I want to keep track of my Wither debuff, specifically how many stacks it is at. I found that the timer in the middle of the Wither icon telling me how soon it would expire overlaps with the number of stacks of Wither, causing me to be unable to read it.
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As I was questing, I started noticing debuffs on enemies from other classes. Moonfires, Sunfires, etc. It was distracting to me and I decided I didn’t like it, so I wanted to turn off all debuffs other than my own. I navigated to the Nameplate section of the Options Menu and found settings that seem to pertain to that very setting. However, the options were confusing (I didn’t understand what they meant) and it was difficult to test if it worked. I feel these settings need to be better clarified, perhaps given different names and/or descriptions to explain what they are.
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Finally I wanted to suggest that seeing other player’s debuffs should not be toggled on by default. I understand that it gives the player more information about what’s going on, but much of that information just isn’t important. When I say this, I am primarily addressing new players. We all understand that WoW can be a very overwhelming experience when you first start playing. It can be tough to figure out how the game works and I think that showing other player debuffs could send confusing signals to new players.
^ As an addition to that comment, if you feel that seeing other player debuffs is necessary to the way the game is designed going forward, I would propose a clearer designation for what buffs are yours, and what buffs are not.
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Cooldown/duration timers (center of icon) overlapping with stack counters (bottom-right corner of icon) is a general issue that also applies to buffs in the Cooldown Manager’s Tracked Buffs display. This needs some tweaking or options to scale the numbers separately.
I think the categories for buffs/debuffs on enemy nameplates are intuitive:
- Mob Buffs - buffs the mob applies to itself / gains from allied mobs are displayed to the left of the nameplate
- Personal Debuffs - debuffs applied by your spells are displayed above the nameplate
- Shared CC - stuns/fears/etc from your spells and other players’ are displayed to the right of the nameplate
- The categories for player nameplates are similar, rotated around for allied players so your buffs are on the left and enemy debuffs are on top, but I don’t know what “Big Debuff” means yet
Unfortunately, the category filters are currently broken or maybe not implemented yet. For example, Fire Breath displays as Shared CC even though it is not a cc and should be a Personal Debuff. The Personal Debuffs display is also not filtering to just your debuffs, and will show other players’ debuffs, even if they are not in your party or even the opposite faction.
I expect these bugs will get fixed in a future build, but I would like to see better scaling of the duration and stack counter numbers, plus an option to disable tooltips on mouseover.
There should also be a pane similar to the cooldown/buff tracker pane to select which of your own buffs/debuffs are displayed on nameplates. This could include an option to select ‘important’ buffs, displaying them first in the list or highlighted/enlarged. We were told that the Cooldown Manger will be updated with some of your debuffs on your current target displayed in the Tracked Buffs bar, so there should be settings to decide which debuffs show on nameplates, cooldown manager, or both.
Lastly, the Shared CC option should also show Interrupts; when this option is enabled along with the Spell Target option for Cast Bar Information, it should replace the Spell Target name with the name of the player whose Interrupt is affecting the mob. These are common options in add-ons like Plater or BetterBlizzPlates that make it much easier to coordinate kicks and stops in dungeons, without which pug groups are at a disadvantage due to lack of communication, not skill.
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