Hi,

I have been trying out a new concept in UI Spell Management.  Someone is probably already doing this, but I have not seen it, so I will describe it and open for general discussion.  I am using some LEAN manufacturing concept as well as Management by Exception with....  Ah hell, back to game talk...  I think this will be very helpful to reduce dot clipping and increase the use of attacks with longer cooldowns. 

First, I have the buttons of interest hidden when out of combat.

Second, the some buttons are set to only be visible if I can harm the target.  Since, one cannot cast a Corruption without a target nor can one (No matter how badly you want to smack that Jenkins dude in your pug) , so why have the button present?

These are pretty straightforward.  But, here is where the innovation comes into play (sorry, could not resist the pub).  All of the buttons are set to 10% alpha so they are barely visible.  Buttons are present, but cannot be seen, so I do not get into taint.  Over the location of the button of interest I place a debuff Icon.  The Icon only shows up when it is NOT on the target and cast by me.  WTF?  Yea, instead of showing that a debuff is present near the unit frame and/or on a separate cooldown table on the screen I put it right on my action bar.    To put it another way, if I put a dot on a mob, the button "disappears".  I do not see it.  If I target a new mob the button reappears, because it has not yet been dotted by me.  If I retarget the first, the button remains invisible until the debuff has runs its course.  This way, I do not have to keep track of which debuff rundown belongs to what mob.  Nor, do I have to wonder if that dot is mine or the other lock's.

In my best "Billy Maise"  but, wait, there is more.  I do something similar with my self-cast buffs.  But, instead of treating it as a buff, I treat it as a cool down, because that is what is more important.  I can remember the first 15 seconds of my buff, I am more worried about the 2 minute cooldown.  Instead of having the numbers of the cooldown, or the darkness sweep, distracting me, I eliminate the clutter.  Gone.  I am not distracted with a button that cannot be used on precious screen space.  Nor do I have to look back and forth at a separate cooldown counter.   I use the same concept of cooldown on my attacks with cooldowns.  If I cannot use it, it is not there.    

So, what do you think?  Is it innovative?  Does anyone like it or should I just go back to watching TV and playing wow?  Because, I am a twice baked couch potato(e for my good ol' buddy DanQ.)

Rhamses

interesting concept but if you linked a video of you showing off some features or a mess load of screen shots explaining what your saying as we read alone would help

http://my.curse.com/members/rhamses/files/slideshow.aspx

I hope this works

You could either do what you described above or simply create a castsequence macro and use only one or two buttons.

/castsequence reset=target haunt, corruption, curse of agony, unstable affliction, haunt, etc, etc...

Hi Iridium, thanks for the feedback.  I was not clear enough or I do not understand enough about /cast sequence

Can /cast sequence remember what has occured on target A once it resets on Target B?  How does it handle items on cooldown and how does it notify the player to refresh?

Take a look at the slideshow.  I think I uploaded them correctly this time

Rhamses

Yeah, the idea is a really good one. I could see it being very useful in combination with buttons that only display if the target is friendly or unfriendly for PvP especially. You used to be able to use Flexbuttons to do **** like this but it was very memory intensive since each button had its own script basically. You could see if they updated it for 3.2.0 or what's the deal.

thank you rhamses for the pics makes it alot clearer and that would be a very good setup option for alot of my characters in the future. You should make a in detail guide on how total newbs could setup the same idea on there favorite characters. ^_^ good job with this idea

This is, indeed, an interesting idea.

I've already gone a part of the step with nUI in that it now shows the time remaining on an active spell on the target on the action bar itself, as well as cooldowns. The only thing I would have to add to accomplish what you're referring to is the fading of the icon and that can be done. I can also add a test for self-cast to do the same thing.

It's a very good idea.

Thanks, man!

I Played with the Nui in beta and was very happy with it.  I stepped away from the game a while and I am came back with this idea.  I was thinking about adopting it to NUI with Bartender4 and TellMeWhen.  The advantage of combining the two is that with NUI, I have the time left on the debuff up by the threat bar.  It might give the more experienced player a heads up on what is needed a couple of seconds in the Future.  But, I am more worried about what needs to be done right now!  So, I went with the Binary conditionals supplemented with a logarithmic cooldown bar that contains all the cooldowns that is only 30 seconds so the near-term cooldown is exagerated. 

I would be honored to develop this idea with you in thread or one on one.

Rhamses

Well... nUI has changed a *lot* since you remember it, I'm sure.

I would like to suggest that you come over to nUI's forum. There's a specific forum there for suggestions and a lot of very talented and very involved nUI users there. If we were able to discuss it in that forum, we could likely get some very valuable input from nUI's users there. The nUI forums are at http://www.wowinterface.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=86 -- the suggestions forum is at http://www.wowinterface.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=91

I'd really love to see where we could take this.

I would also suggest you visit http://www.nUIaddon.com/plus.html and sign up for the newsletter (free) -- it will give you instructions on how to download the full featured version of nUI+ (also free) -- the current nUI+ development version (5.03.11) is the one I would be working in to implement this.

EDIT: btw... there would be no need for Bartender as this would be done directly in nUI's own action bars and there's no reason you can't use TellMeWhen with it.

With a combination of things like PolMonitor and EventHorizon, there is already similar things out there that do what you want.  PolMonitor colors your spells based on whether or not it is up on your current target.  Bongos also does it directly within its own addon.  EventHorizon takes all of your current dots into accounts and plans them out all on an animated time scale.  You can see when your corruption will expire in relation to your immolate and haunt.

However, I don't think there is much out currently that does exactly what you want of "hiding" the spell until it is needed.  I think it's a pretty solid idea and I wish you luck in getting it done.

Again, thanks for the feedback.  Scott, My thought of using Bartender was a bit of a hack on my part.  I do not remember the ability to reduce the alpha of your bars.  The way I get this to work, is to use the Feedback through the Buff within or without combat, but the button is always "dimmed" and I "click through" the buff to button below. 

I am sure we can hash it out with other users to develop the concept further and you can modify the code.  I would not be much help there.  I am not much further along than swapping API events or responses from existing code.

Rhamses

I did see your post on the nUI forum and have made my initial response. I didn't catch about displaying the icon for the buff itself in lieu of the action button icon, but that's easy to do as I already have all that information since I already have the timers, etc.