This thread is to discuss defaults for Grid2. Both specific class/spec defaults, ideas for defaults plugins, ways to layer look and feel stuff on top of all that.
To kick it off, right now I am working on the buffs / debuffs to include for each class. Here is what I have so far:
None of the combination buffs (MOTW / GOTW, etc. are included. They will be part of the Grid2StatusAuraGroup plugin module.
What is missing / what colors are needed. Currently the colors are randomly cut & pasted.
There is nothing for hunters, but then they do not really have much to offer except for NR aura and some attack buffs. If I am ill informed let me know. An idea would be to use Grid2StatusAuraGroup to make a buffs-raid indicator to detect missing raid-wide buffs by pairing the different buffs from different classes that are equivalent.
I added Evasion to rogues, but they probably do not care to see it. It may be more useful for healers to see, or should just be dropped.
I am thinking of adding 2 more indicators for the following categories:
*replenishment: mana tide, innervate, etc.
*hots / passive heals: renew, rejuv, regrowth, lifebloom, wild growth, prayer of mending, enraged regeneration, etc.
Specific classes may break out their particular ones separately but the bulk of them would probably stay together.
I am also changing the size and aspect ratio of the default frames to something larger. This helps me save time during debugging by making things still tiny but visible / readable at the 2560x1600 resolution of my monitor. The more minimal settings can come back in the future when settings become future proofed.
I need more setups posted to get a better idea of what and how many sizes to do.
Abolish Poison doesn't need to be listed separately; the generic "Poison" debuff status should behave like it has forever, in that it only shows up if a unit has a poison debuff and doesn't have an abolish debuff on them. Same goes for priests and Abolish Disease.
For shamans:
The actual buff that's applied to people is just called "Earthliving", not "Earthliving Weapon".
For priests:
The Grace buff is missing.
For paladins:
Beacon of Light is missing; note that this should only be for the targeted part of this buff (the part that gives heals) rather than the passive aura part that's put on everyone within range.
In general:
I think there are way too many self-buffs included in your list. Mages already know if they have Ice Armor or Ice Barrier up; they don't need or want to see if other mages have them up too. Rogues don't need to see when other rogues pop Evasion. Warlocks don't need to see when other warlocks pop Shadow Ward, or have Demon Armor, Demon Skin, Fel Armor, or even Soul Link active. Warriors don't need to know when other warriors pop Last Stand or Shield Wall... they probably don't care about shouts either, since if they don't have their shout on themselves, nobody else does either. Additionally, most of those things don't affect other classes' actions either. For example, healers aren't going to heal a mage differently if he has Ice Armor up; it just doesn't make enough of a difference to matter. Defaults should be a good starting point, not a massive bloatfest of everything that could possibly be shown; if people want to add to the visual clutter and the amount of information processing, they can easily add additional buffs and debuffs.
Also, many of the buffs you listed as class-specific (such as "if class is druid, show these HoTs") are actually wanted by other classes. I mainly play a resto shaman, and I assure you I certainly do want to see HoTs from druids and priests.
@Lindalas
The API doesn't tell you if a debuff counts as a "root" or a "snare"; you'd need to set up and maintain a hardcoded list of debuffs that should be classified that way. Such functionality is better suited to the "buff group" plugin along with Power Word:/Prayer of Fortitude, etc.
Hunter's can remove roots/snares with Master's Call, so that would be one thing we could have an indicator for.
Ok so I assume you are talking about the 4 second immune to snares buff it adds. The cooldown is one minute so knowledge of it does not help a single hunter. Knowledge of it could help other casters of snare removal. Paladins and Hunters?
As Phanx mentions, we need a Grid2StatusAuraGroup implemented before we can make use of this. So probably both a debuff group to detect who needs it + a buff group so casters have a chance of avoiding duplication.
Abolish Poison doesn't need to be listed separately; the generic "Poison" debuff status should behave like it has forever, in that it only shows up if a unit has a poison debuff and doesn't have an abolish debuff on them. Same goes for priests and Abolish Disease.
...
Mmm interesting. I pvp sometimes though and especially with rogues it sometimes helps to abolish + remove so you can get rid of a stack faster. The next patch nerfs the tick period as well iirc but increases duration making this even more of an issue.
In raid I never run into such an issue though. I wonder if it should be a setting or pvp combat based check?
...Beacon of Light is missing; note that this should only be for the targeted part of this buff (the part that gives heals) rather than the passive aura part that's put on everyone within range...
So the aura to check for is Beacon of Light, and the passive aura is Light's Beacon?
Is it necessary to indicate who has the passive so you can prefer to heal people in range over those not in range?
...I think there are way too many self-buffs included in your list....
Ok this is my bad as I should have explained the parameters. For example the current most complicated one:
setup.buffs["buff-Lifebloom"] = { 33763, 2, 0, .5, 0, 0, .7, 0, .2, 1, .2 }
The first number is the spellId to use to get the (localized) aura name so it can be detected.
The next number is:
false = show any such instance
true = show only ones that I cast
some number = show only ones that I cast, at this threshold start to blink (if it is an indicator that supports blink). Blinking as in what the aggro indicator does for example.
After that there are 1 or more sets of 3 color numbers, [r, g, b,]... with values of 0 (none) to 1 maximum.
Everything will have at least one color. More if they support stack coloring for example. In this case the first color is green only (0, .5, 0) with a value halfway between no green and maximum green.
So yes for the self buffs it would only show your own by default. If anyone wants to be nosy and see if other people know how to play their class they will have to modify that themselves. For example my DK and Mage use Grid to track their armors and horn of winter.
My Druid tracks thorns in regular Grid, but it has class filtering to also show on other druids as well as potential tank classes.
Another point I did not mention is that buffs-mine will default to only showing when the buff is not present. Possibly with blinking when less than 5 or 10 minutes are left. That way it tells you when you can / should cast a buff.
The set listed also does not include the buffs that are raid wide but with multiple buff sources. I will add those when Grid2StatusAuraGroup is available.
...many of the buffs you listed as class-specific (such as "if class is druid, show these HoTs") are actually wanted by other classes....
Indeed. The new "hots" indicator I mentioned below would serve as a grab bag for those, with minor additons and deletions from it per class. I am still wondering if it should include non hots like Living Seed, Earth Shield, various other shield effects etc or if those should have a separate indicator.
Grid2StatusAuraGroup should probably also provide a healing reduced indicator?
The other thing I am thinking of doing is to have a named indicators like "buffs-mine" or "hots" automatically update as we make changes or as Blizzard adds more spells to the game. So if you stick with the name it auto-updates, if you rename it you are choosing to basically roll your own and keep it updated for your specific purposes.
I think the problem is what you want to track by default and how flexible you want to be if people have special needs.
E.g. i think nobody apart the resto shaman should be interested in Earth Shield and he's mainly interested in his own. Should the (for my server very unlikely situation) happen that two resto shamans are there - it might be good for them to see which tank has an earth shield up and which is theirs - so they don't accidentally overwrite each others earth shield - but that's rather a pug issue, in a guild both should know who does what.
Same goes for any other class buff. As a tree i don't care who has Prayer of Mending, and as a priest i don't care about rolling lifebloom - especiallly as a druid i don't care about Lifeblooms from other peoples, but my own.
I think Grid2 should stick to profiding a very small set of indicators while being able to extend those to many ways.
I would like a self-buff tracking (i might miss inner fire), but nobody else should be hardly be interested apart from me.
For classes i would use buffs, selfbuffs (visible for the player only), removable debufs (magic, curse, poison, desease) if needed number trackers for charges / cooldowns (earth shield, lifebloom, PoM charges).
(hope it's not too late and i totally miseed the intention of the threaD)
Amplify/Dampen/Focus magic buffs are important to mages.
Edit: It would seem that list is for buffs that last less than 30 seconds. If so, Ice Armor, Demon Armor, Fel Armor, should be removed, and you'll probably add Innervate.
Paladin - Divine Intervention (so everyone who has grid can see someone was DI'd - and occasionally how bad a pally screwed up by DI'ing a non-rezzing class) and Blessing of Protection.
I do agree with Phanx on several self-buffs, some of them are not relevant enough to be included as default.
I think the problem is what you want to track by default and how flexible you want to be if people have special needs.
Well right now I am thinking that by default you get all self buffs and single buffs for your class. If you have the AuraGroup plugin you also get those.
There may be some way to quickly switch between small, medium, full meal deal, etc sets. Or perhaps the default is some particular one of the available ones.
...As a tree i don't care who has Prayer of Mending, and as a priest i don't care about rolling lifebloom - especiallly as a druid i don't care about Lifeblooms from other peoples, but my own.
I think Grid2 should stick to profiding a very small set of indicators while being able to extend those to many ways.
Grid2 has the config split out as a separate lod module. This is a significant change from Grid.
Providing easy options in the config has no normal usage cost, or should not*. Therefore, providing all self buff options for a particular class gets you somewhere that is easier to edit than to type in buff names from memory if you start from scratch or a minimal set. (Typing a name exactly vs unchecking a box)
*I think I may need to rearrange things a bit to make this so.
As for tracking other peoples hots and whatnot, for any particular class this will be in the "hots" indicator and you can just delete / disable it entirely. Its purpose is to let you see which damaged person has at least some hots helping them out. You can certainly heal without it.
(hope it's not too late and i totally miseed the intention of the threaD)
I added Inner Fire too. This thread will slowly cover all aspects of Grid2 defaults. Right now it is mostly about seeing the full scope of what is possible for buffs/debuffs and then organizing / splitting it out in particular ways for particular classes/specs.
The theoretical goal is to get a default for a class/spec that is perfect for 95% or so of such users. Or the biggest fraction possible. An easily chosen alternate setup then covers the next biggest chunk of users, etc.
In practice people that post will have more influence since there is no actual scientific polling or usage metrics to base any of this on. Tree druids will have to put up with my setup as the main default since I need it that way for easy sv reset etc. Similarly you may be The Decider for your particular class/spec.
Also, the full meal plan may not be the default if it generally has too much frivolous stuff in it.
I am also thinking of making buffs / debuffs pickable from a popup to possibly avoid having to type when creating them.
I just don't think that most users want to use Grid to track their own self-buffs. Most priests just watch their buff mod to keep track of Inner Fire on themselves. Same goes for mage and warlock armors, Soul Link, etc. Buffs that you can only cast on yourself are not good candidates for default statuses in a party/raid frame addon. Everyone already has a fully featured display of buffs on themselves. It's just not necessary to have that information duplicated in Grid. If someone really wants to show those kind of buffs, they can add them, but I don't think they should be enabled by default.
I would also argue that short-duration buffs that affect you and nearby players -- warrior Shouts, Horn of Winter, shaman totems, etc -- should also not be enabled by default. Again, everyone already has a fully featured display of buffs on themselves. If a death knight, for example, doesn't have Horn of Winter up, not only will it not be on anyone else in the group, but it won't be on him either.
From your posts in various threads, I get the impression that you are one of the people who install 12 plugins and stuff your Grid frames full of blinking indicators, gradient colors, timer bars, extra icons, duration texts, and everything else under the sun so you can really see everything that's going on with everyone all the time. While that's fine, you really should step back and take a look at the original design goals for the addon. Grid was written to be a minimal overview of only critical information. Any default configuration should reflect this, and only include the minimum information someone needs to make good decisions. Users who want to see more information can add it, but the flexibility of Grid is already daunting enough to new users, and even to many people who've been using it for a long time. If you keep up with the Grid thread, you'll read tons of posts from people asking even basic questions like "how do I make the frames more rectangular?" or "I've been using Grid for a long time on <insert class here>, I just rolled a <insert other class here>, how can I get <insert buff here> to show up?". These things are pretty easy to figure out (I think) yet people have trouble figuring them out. Don't make things more difficult for the average user by giving them a default configuration that is overloaded with too much detailed information. If your goal is to avoid having people spend much (or any) time using the configuration, then have reasonable defaults, not maximum overload defaults.
I wholeheartedly agree with Phanx, most self-buffs are monitored closely elsewhere.
eg. I currently play a shadowpriest (with whom I have successfully tanked Durn at level 69), I need to know my Inner Fire, Shadow Weaving, Fortitude on myself. Others don't need to know that. What *I* need to know, is people who are missing Power Word: Fortitude (OOC, IC I don't buff due to high threat generation, unless it's a tank, then I will). But that buff will be covered in the AuraGroup thing, so it doesn't have to be included in the defaults.
Imho important statusses (shouldn't this be stati?) :
- Weakened Soul
- Forbearance (perhaps Divine Protection so healers know which tank deemed him/herself near death)
- Divine Intervention - for those awesome OH SH*T moments where you know you will wipe so you know to get to a spot to be ressed easily
- PoM for priest is desirable.
- HoTs (even Gift of the Naaru and Lifeblood, because those do act as buffer for heals, healers want to see them. Any class with a capability to heal will like them. I do drop out of shadow to heal as well if needed)
- Aggro
- OOM (lower than 35%)
- Incoming heals
- Amplify/Dampen/Focus Magic as Xinhuan mentioned
- Beacon of Light
- Earthliving
- Power World: Shield
That's all I can think of right now. But the self-buffs I wouldn't include too much.
Perhaps one type of debuff should be central (or a priority strata) and that's the positive/negative charge. But this IS a personal thing, not sure if others agree. If I knew how to write a config instantly usable in grid2 with those settings, I would and then post it for you to look at, sadly I do not.
As a Rogue all I can say is that I don't care about any (not just self) buffs. Evasion? I'm sorry, but I have my buff frames, I have MSBT and I actually push the button to pop it. So I know exactly when I have it. And I don't need some square blinking in my face in Grid for it.
As a Warrior I don't care about my Last Stand or Shield Wall. The reasons are exactly the same. And everyone in the raid knows when I pop either of them because I'm very vocal on vent (and it's also my belief that such important things should be announced on Vent and/or in chat/RW).
I can also say that I don't even care about shouts. Because really, if its not on me, no one else has it. And if its on me and some melee-X did not get it it's his problem most likely, because it's actually his job to be in range of me to get shouts. And I also don't want indicators blinking in my face because some shammy-Z, druid-Y and paladin-Z are constantly out of range.
What I'm getting at is that Grid is not a buff frame addon. People have SBF/Buffalo/UnitFrames/Default (etc) for that. It's not even actually a unitframe addon.
Grid is a raid status/healing addon. It must show important and critical things for Raid.
Overcrowding it with stuff (e.g. self buffs) no one would ever care about is just wong in my opinion.
EDIT (some actualt addition): The only thing that I may actually care about as a Warrior is Vigilance (http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=50720).
I just don't think that most users want to use Grid to track their own self-buffs...
Thats completely ok. Just because I am asking for absolutely everything that could possibly be tracked does not mean I intend to track everything nor default to tracking everything. All will be available to add as buffs/debuffs should you choose to though.
When I wrote "There may be some way to quickly switch between small, medium, full meal deal, etc sets. Or perhaps the default is some particular one of the available ones." I meant exactly that. On the scale from the minimum possible to the maximum possible, the default will be somewhere in between most likely.
...Everyone already has a fully featured display of buffs on themselves. It's just not necessary to have that information duplicated in Grid. If someone really wants to show those kind of buffs, they can add them, but I don't think they should be enabled by default...
I am not sure what you are referring to. The Blizzard display of all 26+ raid buffs that are on you? Some specialized buff mod's display?
At any rate I barely use the former as it is total overload and I do not use a specialized buff mod. I use Grid for buffing. That includes both self buffs and raid buffs. If I played a paladin I would get pally power since their buffs are so messed up.
...From your posts in various threads, I get the impression that you are one of the people who install 12 plugins and stuff your Grid frames full of blinking indicators, gradient colors, timer bars, extra icons, duration texts, and everything else under the sun so you can really see everything that's going on with everyone all the time. While that's fine, you really should step back and take a look at the original design goals for the addon...
The problem is that you confuse my being familiar with all surviving Grid plugin modules because I upgraded roughly half of them to the guid grid branch with me being someone who lights their grid up like a xmas tree. Simply incorrect. I do use more indicators than average though, simply because I am more spacially oriented and I prefer to work with my brain rather than fight it.
My Grid frames look like this: buffs-mine: thorns, motw/gotw only shown when absent. Thorns only on apropriate classes non-combat. Wild Growth displays on top of that. In combat in a 25 man raid this only lites up for people with wild growth or combat rezzed / ankhed etc. people missing motw. top-left, top, top-right: Indicators for lifebloom, regrowth and rejuv. The lifebloom one has stack coloring and a digital text cooldown counter. Obviously they only show up on units where I cast them. (The other two used to have counters but instead of upgrading old grid mods for that I eventually ended up here implementing Grid2 config so I can have that here instead). aggro bottom-rightAbolish Poison center-iconRaid Debuffs center-left-iconCurable Poisons center-right-iconCurable Curses side-leftDoes unit have rejuv, regrowth present for swiftmend?
So thats 12 excluding border and health & incoming heals.
Can this be slimmed down? Absolutely. Maya is a tree druid and raids with Grid as is. Would I slim mine down? No. I want to see exactly the information I need to take action on a unit, nothing more, nothing less and without compromise. It is unacceptable for some priority system to hide something from me I could act on. This leads me to the following deviations from minimal Grid default:
2 extra icons: 1 each for poisons and curses, spacially placed in the frame the way their key is on my keyboard. Using only one indicator for them would prevent _me_ from prioritizing what if anything to cure. I also do not want them fighting it out with boss debuffs. In terms of "clutter" this only occurs if there actually is more than one curse / poison / raid debuff on a unit at the same time. This is ok with me though, I want to know.
1 extra text: I need the name to always be on a unit so I can find it when I need to combat rez or innervate it or whatever. So all non-name text stuff goes into text2.
3 indicators for my hots: Gaudy stack coloring on the lifebloom. Sure you could use just one indicator for all three with some kinda complex color scheme. I prefer 3 so I can make fast and accurate decisions about what needs updating amongst the rolling lifeblooms, regrowths and rejuvs. Again, they are laid out as on my keyboard.
1 indicator for swiftmendable hots. I can swiftmend off any druids rejuv or regrowth. This lets me know I can without rejuving the target first and incurring a gcd.
1 buff indicator: I use Grid for buffing.
The rest is fairly standard.
So yes, I do have 2 extra icons so I can see what particular poison or curse I am dealing with. Yes, I do have duration texts so I can see when I need to refresh a particular hot. No, I do not have blinking indicators, gradient colors, timer bars.
...I get the impression that you are one of the people who install 12 plugins ... and everything else under the sun so you can really see everything that's going on with everyone all the time...
No, actually my Grid shows me what I actually need to know to heal, buff, and debuff the raid. I have no idea what other people are doing. I can detect other healers doing their job because I can see incoming heals and fluctuating health bars. I can sometimes see people removing debuffs. I can detect a unit made swiftmendable by another druid.
That is it. I am no puppet master. I do not try to see if other people are doing their job. My only need in that regard is what is my +heal at the ready check? Will it trinket out to +2815 healing or am I missing someones raid buff?
...you really should step back and take a look at the original design goals for the addon...
The design goals are: provide in as minimal a way as possible information you need to heal and debuff a raid. Everything is black/dark, except things that need your attention which will show up in color as text, square or icon and thus naturally draw your attention to it. So for instance black, then blinking red square if there is aggro.
This can be formulated many ways, but thats pretty much what it boils down to. The black thing is a specific design philosophy Maya had.
Now does this mean everyone should only use Grid in this way? No. Brains are wired in a variety of ways. Color blindness is proof that we do not even perceive light the same way. Dyslexia tells us we do not necessarily read the same way. Some people like myself can see the hideous flicker in the new "digital" theaters with inadequate screen refresh rates. Some people can not see it. Various screen resolutions require adjustable settings simply to be able to actually see Grid. My native resolution of 2560x1600 means i pretty much crank anything up to scale=2 then start adjusting it to taste. Decades of using bar charts and similar display conventions make some people use inverted color instead of Grid defaults.
Offering a configurable UI that accommodates various needs is not only polite, it is required.
...Grid was written to be a minimal overview of only critical information. Any default configuration should reflect this, and only include the minimum information someone needs to make good decisions....
I am aware of the design goals but your conclusion does not follow.
Let us assume that for some class/spec we come up with a tall, grande, and venti config. Tall is minimal, anything less and you are a detriment to your group, a noob if you will. Venti is stuffed with anything remotely useful. It is the functional union of dozens of different configs for that class/spec. Grande is somewhere in between.
As a matter of logic any given target audience will split amongst the three. Our job as UI providers is to make the most popular one the default. This may be any one of the 3. There is no reason to prefer Tall to be anointed default and the other two needing a burdensome click to switch to.
Again, as noted below, in the absence of scientific data it will really boil down to whatever happens in this thread. I will put you down as a vote for minimal in all cases. All votes but mine get ignored for Druid/Tree.
...Grid is already daunting enough to new users, and even to many people who've been using it for a long time. If you keep up with the Grid thread, you'll read tons of posts from people asking even basic questions like "how do I make the frames more rectangular?" or "I've been using Grid for a long time on <insert class here>, I just rolled a <insert other class here>, how can I get <insert buff here> to show up?". These things are pretty easy to figure out (I think) yet people have trouble figuring them out. Don't make things more difficult for the average user by giving them a default configuration that is overloaded with too much detailed information. If your goal is to avoid having people spend much (or any) time using the configuration, then have reasonable defaults, not maximum overload defaults...
I absolutely agree with this. Not only is Grid daunting to new users. Most flee in terror and never return. Some lucky ones know people that can help them set it up.
At the end of this process I want a new class/spec to open up Grid and do 1 of the following:
1) Nothing. They try it and it just works. It has a sufficient amount of information without hiding too much and allows them to heal and function at peak efficiency.
2) They make minor cosmetic changes. They switch between a set of premade configs that are inverted or not, rectangular or square, nice spacing between components, perhaps even adequate white space. Possibly novel arrangements and placements of indicators. Basically enough to get a flavor of the variety that is possible.
3) They pick one of the other configs for their spec.
4) They pick some combination of premade settings they like and adjust them to what they want instead.
5) They delete everything / use major surgery to build a custom setup from scratch same way you do in Grid today.
These should occur in decreasing order of frequency. Also possible will be 3rd party configs to add more choices.
When you open the Grid2 config, the default page you will see has the popups for these high level settings on it.
If you use 3rd party plugins, I want them to have quick / automagical ways to affect your UI, instead of leaving users to search through the config to find the particular little tidbit they added.
Ok let's make a list per class with buffs - and mandatory and optional indicators (a wiki page where many can edit would be helpful i think).
Did Curse get wiki working yet collaboratively? I could also make a Google Code wiki for it and have it show the actual code. Then incorporate comments directly into the code. That may be a touch abstract for people though.
As a Rogue all I can say is that I don't care about any (not just self) buffs...
I agree. Likely for some classes there would be very little if anything going on.
As mentioned a few times now, this process right now is to get everything remotely possible on record so it can be identified, clarified and classified for use in actual defaults or just as something in a config popup on the remote chance someone wants it for their custom config.
...What I'm getting at is that Grid is not a buff frame addon. People have SBF/Buffalo/UnitFrames/Default (etc) for that. It's not even actually a unitframe addon.
Grid is a raid status/healing addon. It must show important and critical things for Raid...
This is incorrect. Anyone is welcome to only use Grid for some specific and limited purpose. For me it IS my unit frames. I use it to heal solo - 40 man. You can not pay me enough gold to use Blizzards abomination frames. I supplement it with Pitbull to get 7 additional unit frames (pet / target, self / target, focus / target / targetoftarget). Since my paladin is a level 5 banker, I can and do use Grid for buffing on my alts and main.
...Overcrowding it with stuff (e.g. self buffs) no one would ever care about is just wong in my opinion...
The only thing getting "overcrowded" is the deluxe venti config for some class/spec. In the case of Warriors, Rogues, Hunters it is quite possible the default config will show nothing. Or perhaps Warrior/Protection will have the Vigilance buff you mentioned.
It is likely there will be some kind of raid leader / raid status config.
Evasion though will be on a config popup, just waiting for some healer to add it for the sheer /popcorn delight of it.
...Perhaps one type of debuff should be central (or a priority strata) and that's the positive/negative charge...
That reminds me, why am I not seeing this on raid debuff at the moment. On the other hand we just got the achievement in 25 man finally. Sweet, next week i should be able to see the shocking in action on Grid. Especially the mad rush to kill people after Thaddius dies ;-p
I am not sure what you are referring to. The Blizzard display of all 26+ raid buffs that are on you? Some specialized buff mod's display?
Millions of people are able to play just fine with the Blizzard buff display. I'd be willing to bet that there are even people in very high-end guilds like Death & Taxes, etc. who play with the Blizzard buff display. I'd also be willing to bet that 99% of people who are dissatisfied with the Blizzard buff display have at least one addon dedicated solely to buffs, whether it be a fully featured buff display like ElkBuffBars, SatrinaBuffFrames, etc., or a more compact monitor type addon like BuffEnough. I can honestly say that in 4+ years of playing this game, you are the first person I've ever heard say that they use their raid frames as their primary method of monitoring buffs on themselves.
The problem is that you confuse my being familiar with all surviving Grid plugin modules because I upgraded roughly half of them to the guid grid branch with me being someone who lights their grid up like a xmas tree. Simply incorrect.
No, I remember quite clearly our past discussions about what is and isn't needed in a Grid setup, back when you posted under the name "Toadkiller". Unless your views have radically changed since then, you have way more stuff shown in way more places on Grid than I would ever want. Even your recent posts about the efficiency of timer bars shows your preference for things Grid was never designed to be able to show.
It is unacceptable for some priority system to hide something from me I could act on.
But you can only act on one thing at a time. Let's use your example of curses and poisons. If someone has a debuff of each type on them, you can't dispel them both at the same time. If you look at the specific curses and poisons in the game, you'll quickly decide that most of the time, one or the other is more important. Let's say that you, like me, have decided that it's usually more important to dispel a curse than to dispel a poison. It's simply more efficient to just show the one with the higher "dispel priority", unless you can actually recognize instantly the icons of every curse and poison debuff in the game (and keep track of the ones that share the same icon but have different sources). There's no point in displaying information you cannot act on.
This is where we disagree -- you want to see all available information, even if there is no immediate action you can or should take in response to it. I only want to see information that I can or should immediately respond to.
1 extra text: I need the name to always be on a unit so I can find it when I need to combat rez or innervate it or whatever. So all non-name text stuff goes into text2.
While I have no problem with a second text indicator in general, my poor vision simply makes using one impractical. Either the text is too small to read quickly, or the frames occupy, quite literally, half of my screen. Neither is acceptable, and I don't have any trouble remembering where someone was in the grid even if their name isn't presently displayed, so I don't use it.
Tall is minimal, anything less and you are a detriment to your group, a noob if you will.
Beware the old adage about assumptions. I've played with people who had no trouble at all playing their class and spec to perfection with nothing but the UI provided by Blizzard. This UI is certainly far more minimal in terms of information than any Grid configuration.
Our job as UI providers is to make the most popular one the default. This may
be any one of the 3. There is no reason to prefer Tall to be anointed default and the other two needing a burdensome click to switch to.
I would hardly call a click "burdensome". The job of a UI provider is to provide a default UI that works, that is adequate for its purpose, and is understandable to new and experienced users alike. If your goal is to provide the most popular UI, your goal could be met by simply not writing an addon, since the default UI is by far more popular than any addon.
Again, as noted below, in the absence of scientific data it will really boil down to whatever happens in this thread. I will put you down as a vote for minimal in all cases. All votes but mine get ignored for Druid/Tree.
I'd suggest looking through UI screenshots on this and other sites to see how people actually use Grid, rather than relying on your own personal perferences and the stated preferences of a half dozen people who happen to see this thread and feel confident enough to speak up about what they want. ;)
This is incorrect. Anyone is welcome to only use Grid for some specific and limited purpose. For me it IS my unit frames. I use it to heal solo - 40 man. I supplement it with Pitbull to get 7 additional unit frames (pet / target, self / target, focus / target / targetoftarget). Since my paladin is a level 5 banker, I can and do use Grid for buffing on my alts and main.
You really did pull it out of context. Because I was mainly talking about buff frames in relation to self-buffs. The added 'unit frames' phrase was just that. I myself only have 4 unitframes. And that's fine. What is not fine is dumping self buffs onto Grid (in a default config).
By the same logic you can actually make Grid-target and dump every possible debuff there. Because someone will possibly use it.
Evasion though will be on a config popup, just waiting for some healer to add it for the sheer /popcorn delight of it.
Can you justify it somehow though? Because to me it looks like it's there on the premise of 'just because I can'.
Now, on the topic of 'default configs'.
By the virtue of human stupidity and lazyness the 'default default' config (the one that's active on install) will be used the most. And the majority of users will base their opinions on Grid by how well it's done.
Now, you want to create several default configs per class. That may be fine in some imaginary world where everyone likes bees, teddy bears and Tekkub. But people in our world are not like that. If a person does not like the 'default default' he won't like any other config because (it seems like) they'll be the same but with more/less.
Sure you can design 'different' defaults (in a sense of indicator placement, hooked statuses etc.) in a hope that someone will like one of them. But to me, it just looks like wasted time.
The ideal for me is: a user is presented with a one very clean default config for his class, an array of pregenarated statuses (some unhooked ones for more specialized stuff), and finaly (the most important part here), a very clean, intutive and simple way of altering the config (hooking statuses and creating/modifying indicators) so he does not spend hours setting it up.
If it's done, there will be no reason to have several defaults. It would be much faster and simpler to just check/uncheck some stuff and maybe create an additional indicator then to change between configs to see if one of them has the stuff you need.
ps. But the config topic is for another time I guess (indicator/location/status duh :/)
To kick it off, right now I am working on the buffs / debuffs to include for each class. Here is what I have so far:
if (class == "DEATHKNIGHT") then
setup.buffs["buff-HornOfWinter"] = { 57330, true, 0.1, 0.1, 1, }
elseif (class == "DRUID") then
setup.buffs["buff-Lifebloom"] = { 33763, 2, 0, .5, 0, 0, .7, 0, .2, 1, .2 }
setup.buffs["buff-Rejuv"] = { 774, 2, 1, .2, 1, }
setup.buffs["buff-Regrowth"] = { 8936, 2, .2, 1, .2, }
setup.buffs["buff-AbolishPoison"] = { 2893, true, 1, .5, .1, }
setup.buffs["buff-WildGrowth"] = { 53248, true, .4, .9, .4, }
elseif (class == "MAGE") then
setup.buffs["buff-IceArmor"] = { 7302, true, 1, 1, 1, }
setup.buffs["buff-IceBarrier"] = { 11426, true, 1, 1, 1, }
elseif (class == "PALADIN") then
setup.debuffs["debuff-Forbearance"] = { 25771, 1, 0, 0, }
elseif (class == "PRIEST") then
setup.buffs["buff-Renew"] = { 139, true, 1, 1, 1, }
setup.buffs["buff-PrayerOfMending"] = { 33076, true, 1, 1, 1, }
setup.buffs["buff-PowerWordShield"] = { 17, false, 1, 1, 1, }
setup.buffs["buff-DivineAegis"] = { 47509, false, 1, 1, 1, }
setup.debuffs["debuff-WeakenedSoul"] = { 6788, 1, 0, 0, }
elseif (class == "ROGUE") then
setup.buffs["buff-Evasion"] = { 5277, true, 0.1, 0.1, 1, }
elseif (class == "SHAMAN") then
setup.buffs["buff-Riptide"] = { 61295, true, 1, 1, 1, }
setup.buffs["buff-EarthlivingWeapon"] = { 51730, false, 1, 1, 1, }
setup.buffs["buff-EarthShield"] = { 974, false, 1, 1, 1, }
elseif (class == "WARLOCK") then
setup.buffs["buff-ShadowWard"] = { 6229, true, 1, 1, 1, }
setup.buffs["buff-SoulLink"] = { 19028, true, 1, 1, 1, }
setup.buffs["buff-DemonArmor"] = { 706, true, 1, 1, 1, }
setup.buffs["buff-DemonSkin"] = { 696, true, 1, 1, 1, }
setup.buffs["buff-FelArmor"] = { 28189, true, 1, 1, 1, }
elseif (class == "WARRIOR") then
setup.buffs["buff-BattleShout"] = { 2048, true, 0.1, 0.1, 1, }
setup.buffs["buff-CommandingShout"] = { 469, true, 0.1, 0.1, 1, }
setup.buffs["buff-LastStand"] = { 12975, true, 0.1, 0.1, 1, }
setup.buffs["buff-ShieldWall"] = { 871, true, 0.1, 0.1, 1, }
end
None of the combination buffs (MOTW / GOTW, etc. are included. They will be part of the Grid2StatusAuraGroup plugin module.
What is missing / what colors are needed. Currently the colors are randomly cut & pasted.
There is nothing for hunters, but then they do not really have much to offer except for NR aura and some attack buffs. If I am ill informed let me know. An idea would be to use Grid2StatusAuraGroup to make a buffs-raid indicator to detect missing raid-wide buffs by pairing the different buffs from different classes that are equivalent.
I added Evasion to rogues, but they probably do not care to see it. It may be more useful for healers to see, or should just be dropped.
I am thinking of adding 2 more indicators for the following categories:
*replenishment: mana tide, innervate, etc.
*hots / passive heals: renew, rejuv, regrowth, lifebloom, wild growth, prayer of mending, enraged regeneration, etc.
Specific classes may break out their particular ones separately but the bulk of them would probably stay together.
I need more setups posted to get a better idea of what and how many sizes to do.
Abolish Poison doesn't need to be listed separately; the generic "Poison" debuff status should behave like it has forever, in that it only shows up if a unit has a poison debuff and doesn't have an abolish debuff on them. Same goes for priests and Abolish Disease.
For shamans:
The actual buff that's applied to people is just called "Earthliving", not "Earthliving Weapon".
For priests:
The Grace buff is missing.
For paladins:
Beacon of Light is missing; note that this should only be for the targeted part of this buff (the part that gives heals) rather than the passive aura part that's put on everyone within range.
In general:
I think there are way too many self-buffs included in your list. Mages already know if they have Ice Armor or Ice Barrier up; they don't need or want to see if other mages have them up too. Rogues don't need to see when other rogues pop Evasion. Warlocks don't need to see when other warlocks pop Shadow Ward, or have Demon Armor, Demon Skin, Fel Armor, or even Soul Link active. Warriors don't need to know when other warriors pop Last Stand or Shield Wall... they probably don't care about shouts either, since if they don't have their shout on themselves, nobody else does either. Additionally, most of those things don't affect other classes' actions either. For example, healers aren't going to heal a mage differently if he has Ice Armor up; it just doesn't make enough of a difference to matter. Defaults should be a good starting point, not a massive bloatfest of everything that could possibly be shown; if people want to add to the visual clutter and the amount of information processing, they can easily add additional buffs and debuffs.
Also, many of the buffs you listed as class-specific (such as "if class is druid, show these HoTs") are actually wanted by other classes. I mainly play a resto shaman, and I assure you I certainly do want to see HoTs from druids and priests.
@Lindalas
The API doesn't tell you if a debuff counts as a "root" or a "snare"; you'd need to set up and maintain a hardcoded list of debuffs that should be classified that way. Such functionality is better suited to the "buff group" plugin along with Power Word:/Prayer of Fortitude, etc.
Ok so I assume you are talking about the 4 second immune to snares buff it adds. The cooldown is one minute so knowledge of it does not help a single hunter. Knowledge of it could help other casters of snare removal. Paladins and Hunters?
As Phanx mentions, we need a Grid2StatusAuraGroup implemented before we can make use of this. So probably both a debuff group to detect who needs it + a buff group so casters have a chance of avoiding duplication.
Mmm interesting. I pvp sometimes though and especially with rogues it sometimes helps to abolish + remove so you can get rid of a stack faster. The next patch nerfs the tick period as well iirc but increases duration making this even more of an issue.
In raid I never run into such an issue though. I wonder if it should be a setting or pvp combat based check?
So the aura to check for is Beacon of Light, and the passive aura is Light's Beacon?
Is it necessary to indicate who has the passive so you can prefer to heal people in range over those not in range?
Ok this is my bad as I should have explained the parameters. For example the current most complicated one:
setup.buffs["buff-Lifebloom"] = { 33763, 2, 0, .5, 0, 0, .7, 0, .2, 1, .2 }
The first number is the spellId to use to get the (localized) aura name so it can be detected.
The next number is:
false = show any such instance
true = show only ones that I cast
some number = show only ones that I cast, at this threshold start to blink (if it is an indicator that supports blink). Blinking as in what the aggro indicator does for example.
After that there are 1 or more sets of 3 color numbers, [r, g, b,]... with values of 0 (none) to 1 maximum.
Everything will have at least one color. More if they support stack coloring for example. In this case the first color is green only (0, .5, 0) with a value halfway between no green and maximum green.
So yes for the self buffs it would only show your own by default. If anyone wants to be nosy and see if other people know how to play their class they will have to modify that themselves. For example my DK and Mage use Grid to track their armors and horn of winter.
My Druid tracks thorns in regular Grid, but it has class filtering to also show on other druids as well as potential tank classes.
Another point I did not mention is that buffs-mine will default to only showing when the buff is not present. Possibly with blinking when less than 5 or 10 minutes are left. That way it tells you when you can / should cast a buff.
The set listed also does not include the buffs that are raid wide but with multiple buff sources. I will add those when Grid2StatusAuraGroup is available.
Indeed. The new "hots" indicator I mentioned below would serve as a grab bag for those, with minor additons and deletions from it per class. I am still wondering if it should include non hots like Living Seed, Earth Shield, various other shield effects etc or if those should have a separate indicator.
Grid2StatusAuraGroup should probably also provide a healing reduced indicator?
The other thing I am thinking of doing is to have a named indicators like "buffs-mine" or "hots" automatically update as we make changes or as Blizzard adds more spells to the game. So if you stick with the name it auto-updates, if you rename it you are choosing to basically roll your own and keep it updated for your specific purposes.
E.g. i think nobody apart the resto shaman should be interested in Earth Shield and he's mainly interested in his own. Should the (for my server very unlikely situation) happen that two resto shamans are there - it might be good for them to see which tank has an earth shield up and which is theirs - so they don't accidentally overwrite each others earth shield - but that's rather a pug issue, in a guild both should know who does what.
Same goes for any other class buff. As a tree i don't care who has Prayer of Mending, and as a priest i don't care about rolling lifebloom - especiallly as a druid i don't care about Lifeblooms from other peoples, but my own.
I think Grid2 should stick to profiding a very small set of indicators while being able to extend those to many ways.
I would like a self-buff tracking (i might miss inner fire), but nobody else should be hardly be interested apart from me.
For classes i would use buffs, selfbuffs (visible for the player only), removable debufs (magic, curse, poison, desease) if needed number trackers for charges / cooldowns (earth shield, lifebloom, PoM charges).
(hope it's not too late and i totally miseed the intention of the threaD)
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Curse PremiumEdit: It would seem that list is for buffs that last less than 30 seconds. If so, Ice Armor, Demon Armor, Fel Armor, should be removed, and you'll probably add Innervate.
Paladin - Divine Intervention (so everyone who has grid can see someone was DI'd - and occasionally how bad a pally screwed up by DI'ing a non-rezzing class) and Blessing of Protection.
I do agree with Phanx on several self-buffs, some of them are not relevant enough to be included as default.
Well right now I am thinking that by default you get all self buffs and single buffs for your class. If you have the AuraGroup plugin you also get those.
There may be some way to quickly switch between small, medium, full meal deal, etc sets. Or perhaps the default is some particular one of the available ones.
Grid2 has the config split out as a separate lod module. This is a significant change from Grid.
Providing easy options in the config has no normal usage cost, or should not*. Therefore, providing all self buff options for a particular class gets you somewhere that is easier to edit than to type in buff names from memory if you start from scratch or a minimal set. (Typing a name exactly vs unchecking a box)
*I think I may need to rearrange things a bit to make this so.
As for tracking other peoples hots and whatnot, for any particular class this will be in the "hots" indicator and you can just delete / disable it entirely. Its purpose is to let you see which damaged person has at least some hots helping them out. You can certainly heal without it.
I added Inner Fire too. This thread will slowly cover all aspects of Grid2 defaults. Right now it is mostly about seeing the full scope of what is possible for buffs/debuffs and then organizing / splitting it out in particular ways for particular classes/specs.
The theoretical goal is to get a default for a class/spec that is perfect for 95% or so of such users. Or the biggest fraction possible. An easily chosen alternate setup then covers the next biggest chunk of users, etc.
In practice people that post will have more influence since there is no actual scientific polling or usage metrics to base any of this on. Tree druids will have to put up with my setup as the main default since I need it that way for easy sv reset etc. Similarly you may be The Decider for your particular class/spec.
Also, the full meal plan may not be the default if it generally has too much frivolous stuff in it.
I am also thinking of making buffs / debuffs pickable from a popup to possibly avoid having to type when creating them.
I would also argue that short-duration buffs that affect you and nearby players -- warrior Shouts, Horn of Winter, shaman totems, etc -- should also not be enabled by default. Again, everyone already has a fully featured display of buffs on themselves. If a death knight, for example, doesn't have Horn of Winter up, not only will it not be on anyone else in the group, but it won't be on him either.
From your posts in various threads, I get the impression that you are one of the people who install 12 plugins and stuff your Grid frames full of blinking indicators, gradient colors, timer bars, extra icons, duration texts, and everything else under the sun so you can really see everything that's going on with everyone all the time. While that's fine, you really should step back and take a look at the original design goals for the addon. Grid was written to be a minimal overview of only critical information. Any default configuration should reflect this, and only include the minimum information someone needs to make good decisions. Users who want to see more information can add it, but the flexibility of Grid is already daunting enough to new users, and even to many people who've been using it for a long time. If you keep up with the Grid thread, you'll read tons of posts from people asking even basic questions like "how do I make the frames more rectangular?" or "I've been using Grid for a long time on <insert class here>, I just rolled a <insert other class here>, how can I get <insert buff here> to show up?". These things are pretty easy to figure out (I think) yet people have trouble figuring them out. Don't make things more difficult for the average user by giving them a default configuration that is overloaded with too much detailed information. If your goal is to avoid having people spend much (or any) time using the configuration, then have reasonable defaults, not maximum overload defaults.
eg. I currently play a shadowpriest (with whom I have successfully tanked Durn at level 69), I need to know my Inner Fire, Shadow Weaving, Fortitude on myself. Others don't need to know that. What *I* need to know, is people who are missing Power Word: Fortitude (OOC, IC I don't buff due to high threat generation, unless it's a tank, then I will). But that buff will be covered in the AuraGroup thing, so it doesn't have to be included in the defaults.
Imho important statusses (shouldn't this be stati?) :
- Weakened Soul
- Forbearance (perhaps Divine Protection so healers know which tank deemed him/herself near death)
- Divine Intervention - for those awesome OH SH*T moments where you know you will wipe so you know to get to a spot to be ressed easily
- PoM for priest is desirable.
- HoTs (even Gift of the Naaru and Lifeblood, because those do act as buffer for heals, healers want to see them. Any class with a capability to heal will like them. I do drop out of shadow to heal as well if needed)
- Aggro
- OOM (lower than 35%)
- Incoming heals
- Amplify/Dampen/Focus Magic as Xinhuan mentioned
- Beacon of Light
- Earthliving
- Power World: Shield
That's all I can think of right now. But the self-buffs I wouldn't include too much.
Perhaps one type of debuff should be central (or a priority strata) and that's the positive/negative charge. But this IS a personal thing, not sure if others agree. If I knew how to write a config instantly usable in grid2 with those settings, I would and then post it for you to look at, sadly I do not.
Druids
Mandatory
Optional
Priests
Mandatory
Optional (existing but disabled)
Mages
Mandatory
Optional (existing but disabled)
Shaman
Mandatory
Optional (existing but disabled)
Paladin
Mandatory
Optional (existing but disabled)
As a Warrior I don't care about my Last Stand or Shield Wall. The reasons are exactly the same. And everyone in the raid knows when I pop either of them because I'm very vocal on vent (and it's also my belief that such important things should be announced on Vent and/or in chat/RW).
I can also say that I don't even care about shouts. Because really, if its not on me, no one else has it. And if its on me and some melee-X did not get it it's his problem most likely, because it's actually his job to be in range of me to get shouts. And I also don't want indicators blinking in my face because some shammy-Z, druid-Y and paladin-Z are constantly out of range.
What I'm getting at is that Grid is not a buff frame addon. People have SBF/Buffalo/UnitFrames/Default (etc) for that. It's not even actually a unitframe addon.
Grid is a raid status/healing addon. It must show important and critical things for Raid.
Overcrowding it with stuff (e.g. self buffs) no one would ever care about is just wong in my opinion.
EDIT (some actualt addition): The only thing that I may actually care about as a Warrior is Vigilance (http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=50720).
Thats completely ok. Just because I am asking for absolutely everything that could possibly be tracked does not mean I intend to track everything nor default to tracking everything. All will be available to add as buffs/debuffs should you choose to though.
When I wrote "There may be some way to quickly switch between small, medium, full meal deal, etc sets. Or perhaps the default is some particular one of the available ones." I meant exactly that. On the scale from the minimum possible to the maximum possible, the default will be somewhere in between most likely.
I am not sure what you are referring to. The Blizzard display of all 26+ raid buffs that are on you? Some specialized buff mod's display?
At any rate I barely use the former as it is total overload and I do not use a specialized buff mod. I use Grid for buffing. That includes both self buffs and raid buffs. If I played a paladin I would get pally power since their buffs are so messed up.
The problem is that you confuse my being familiar with all surviving Grid plugin modules because I upgraded roughly half of them to the guid grid branch with me being someone who lights their grid up like a xmas tree. Simply incorrect. I do use more indicators than average though, simply because I am more spacially oriented and I prefer to work with my brain rather than fight it.
My Grid frames look like this:
buffs-mine: thorns, motw/gotw only shown when absent. Thorns only on apropriate classes non-combat. Wild Growth displays on top of that. In combat in a 25 man raid this only lites up for people with wild growth or combat rezzed / ankhed etc. people missing motw.
top-left, top, top-right: Indicators for lifebloom, regrowth and rejuv. The lifebloom one has stack coloring and a digital text cooldown counter. Obviously they only show up on units where I cast them. (The other two used to have counters but instead of upgrading old grid mods for that I eventually ended up here implementing Grid2 config so I can have that here instead).
aggro
bottom-rightAbolish Poison
center-iconRaid Debuffs
center-left-iconCurable Poisons
center-right-iconCurable Curses
side-leftDoes unit have rejuv, regrowth present for swiftmend?
text1Unit Name
text2Afk, Dead, Ghost, FD, Incoming Res, Ressed, Offline, Resurrected, SoulStone
border: my target, low mana, pvp flagged, hostile (ie MC), healing reduced / prevented.
So thats 12 excluding border and health & incoming heals.
Can this be slimmed down? Absolutely. Maya is a tree druid and raids with Grid as is. Would I slim mine down? No. I want to see exactly the information I need to take action on a unit, nothing more, nothing less and without compromise. It is unacceptable for some priority system to hide something from me I could act on. This leads me to the following deviations from minimal Grid default:
2 extra icons: 1 each for poisons and curses, spacially placed in the frame the way their key is on my keyboard. Using only one indicator for them would prevent _me_ from prioritizing what if anything to cure. I also do not want them fighting it out with boss debuffs. In terms of "clutter" this only occurs if there actually is more than one curse / poison / raid debuff on a unit at the same time. This is ok with me though, I want to know.
1 extra text: I need the name to always be on a unit so I can find it when I need to combat rez or innervate it or whatever. So all non-name text stuff goes into text2.
3 indicators for my hots: Gaudy stack coloring on the lifebloom. Sure you could use just one indicator for all three with some kinda complex color scheme. I prefer 3 so I can make fast and accurate decisions about what needs updating amongst the rolling lifeblooms, regrowths and rejuvs. Again, they are laid out as on my keyboard.
1 indicator for swiftmendable hots. I can swiftmend off any druids rejuv or regrowth. This lets me know I can without rejuving the target first and incurring a gcd.
1 buff indicator: I use Grid for buffing.
The rest is fairly standard.
So yes, I do have 2 extra icons so I can see what particular poison or curse I am dealing with. Yes, I do have duration texts so I can see when I need to refresh a particular hot. No, I do not have blinking indicators, gradient colors, timer bars.
No, actually my Grid shows me what I actually need to know to heal, buff, and debuff the raid. I have no idea what other people are doing. I can detect other healers doing their job because I can see incoming heals and fluctuating health bars. I can sometimes see people removing debuffs. I can detect a unit made swiftmendable by another druid.
That is it. I am no puppet master. I do not try to see if other people are doing their job. My only need in that regard is what is my +heal at the ready check? Will it trinket out to +2815 healing or am I missing someones raid buff?
The design goals are: provide in as minimal a way as possible information you need to heal and debuff a raid. Everything is black/dark, except things that need your attention which will show up in color as text, square or icon and thus naturally draw your attention to it. So for instance black, then blinking red square if there is aggro.
This can be formulated many ways, but thats pretty much what it boils down to. The black thing is a specific design philosophy Maya had.
Now does this mean everyone should only use Grid in this way? No. Brains are wired in a variety of ways. Color blindness is proof that we do not even perceive light the same way. Dyslexia tells us we do not necessarily read the same way. Some people like myself can see the hideous flicker in the new "digital" theaters with inadequate screen refresh rates. Some people can not see it. Various screen resolutions require adjustable settings simply to be able to actually see Grid. My native resolution of 2560x1600 means i pretty much crank anything up to scale=2 then start adjusting it to taste. Decades of using bar charts and similar display conventions make some people use inverted color instead of Grid defaults.
Offering a configurable UI that accommodates various needs is not only polite, it is required.
I am aware of the design goals but your conclusion does not follow.
Let us assume that for some class/spec we come up with a tall, grande, and venti config. Tall is minimal, anything less and you are a detriment to your group, a noob if you will. Venti is stuffed with anything remotely useful. It is the functional union of dozens of different configs for that class/spec. Grande is somewhere in between.
As a matter of logic any given target audience will split amongst the three. Our job as UI providers is to make the most popular one the default. This may be any one of the 3. There is no reason to prefer Tall to be anointed default and the other two needing a burdensome click to switch to.
Again, as noted below, in the absence of scientific data it will really boil down to whatever happens in this thread. I will put you down as a vote for minimal in all cases. All votes but mine get ignored for Druid/Tree.
I absolutely agree with this. Not only is Grid daunting to new users. Most flee in terror and never return. Some lucky ones know people that can help them set it up.
At the end of this process I want a new class/spec to open up Grid and do 1 of the following:
1) Nothing. They try it and it just works. It has a sufficient amount of information without hiding too much and allows them to heal and function at peak efficiency.
2) They make minor cosmetic changes. They switch between a set of premade configs that are inverted or not, rectangular or square, nice spacing between components, perhaps even adequate white space. Possibly novel arrangements and placements of indicators. Basically enough to get a flavor of the variety that is possible.
3) They pick one of the other configs for their spec.
4) They pick some combination of premade settings they like and adjust them to what they want instead.
5) They delete everything / use major surgery to build a custom setup from scratch same way you do in Grid today.
These should occur in decreasing order of frequency. Also possible will be 3rd party configs to add more choices.
When you open the Grid2 config, the default page you will see has the popups for these high level settings on it.
If you use 3rd party plugins, I want them to have quick / automagical ways to affect your UI, instead of leaving users to search through the config to find the particular little tidbit they added.
Did Curse get wiki working yet collaboratively? I could also make a Google Code wiki for it and have it show the actual code. Then incorporate comments directly into the code. That may be a touch abstract for people though.
I agree. Likely for some classes there would be very little if anything going on.
As mentioned a few times now, this process right now is to get everything remotely possible on record so it can be identified, clarified and classified for use in actual defaults or just as something in a config popup on the remote chance someone wants it for their custom config.
This is incorrect. Anyone is welcome to only use Grid for some specific and limited purpose. For me it IS my unit frames. I use it to heal solo - 40 man. You can not pay me enough gold to use Blizzards abomination frames. I supplement it with Pitbull to get 7 additional unit frames (pet / target, self / target, focus / target / targetoftarget). Since my paladin is a level 5 banker, I can and do use Grid for buffing on my alts and main.
The only thing getting "overcrowded" is the deluxe venti config for some class/spec. In the case of Warriors, Rogues, Hunters it is quite possible the default config will show nothing. Or perhaps Warrior/Protection will have the Vigilance buff you mentioned.
It is likely there will be some kind of raid leader / raid status config.
Evasion though will be on a config popup, just waiting for some healer to add it for the sheer /popcorn delight of it.
That reminds me, why am I not seeing this on raid debuff at the moment. On the other hand we just got the achievement in 25 man finally. Sweet, next week i should be able to see the shocking in action on Grid. Especially the mad rush to kill people after Thaddius dies ;-p
Millions of people are able to play just fine with the Blizzard buff display. I'd be willing to bet that there are even people in very high-end guilds like Death & Taxes, etc. who play with the Blizzard buff display. I'd also be willing to bet that 99% of people who are dissatisfied with the Blizzard buff display have at least one addon dedicated solely to buffs, whether it be a fully featured buff display like ElkBuffBars, SatrinaBuffFrames, etc., or a more compact monitor type addon like BuffEnough. I can honestly say that in 4+ years of playing this game, you are the first person I've ever heard say that they use their raid frames as their primary method of monitoring buffs on themselves.
No, I remember quite clearly our past discussions about what is and isn't needed in a Grid setup, back when you posted under the name "Toadkiller". Unless your views have radically changed since then, you have way more stuff shown in way more places on Grid than I would ever want. Even your recent posts about the efficiency of timer bars shows your preference for things Grid was never designed to be able to show.
But you can only act on one thing at a time. Let's use your example of curses and poisons. If someone has a debuff of each type on them, you can't dispel them both at the same time. If you look at the specific curses and poisons in the game, you'll quickly decide that most of the time, one or the other is more important. Let's say that you, like me, have decided that it's usually more important to dispel a curse than to dispel a poison. It's simply more efficient to just show the one with the higher "dispel priority", unless you can actually recognize instantly the icons of every curse and poison debuff in the game (and keep track of the ones that share the same icon but have different sources). There's no point in displaying information you cannot act on.
This is where we disagree -- you want to see all available information, even if there is no immediate action you can or should take in response to it. I only want to see information that I can or should immediately respond to.
While I have no problem with a second text indicator in general, my poor vision simply makes using one impractical. Either the text is too small to read quickly, or the frames occupy, quite literally, half of my screen. Neither is acceptable, and I don't have any trouble remembering where someone was in the grid even if their name isn't presently displayed, so I don't use it.
Beware the old adage about assumptions. I've played with people who had no trouble at all playing their class and spec to perfection with nothing but the UI provided by Blizzard. This UI is certainly far more minimal in terms of information than any Grid configuration.
Not if your target audience are all fat. Then the most popular size will be the Venti. :lol:
I would hardly call a click "burdensome". The job of a UI provider is to provide a default UI that works, that is adequate for its purpose, and is understandable to new and experienced users alike. If your goal is to provide the most popular UI, your goal could be met by simply not writing an addon, since the default UI is by far more popular than any addon.
I'd suggest looking through UI screenshots on this and other sites to see how people actually use Grid, rather than relying on your own personal perferences and the stated preferences of a half dozen people who happen to see this thread and feel confident enough to speak up about what they want. ;)
By the same logic you can actually make Grid-target and dump every possible debuff there. Because someone will possibly use it.
Can you justify it somehow though? Because to me it looks like it's there on the premise of 'just because I can'.
Now, on the topic of 'default configs'.
By the virtue of human stupidity and lazyness the 'default default' config (the one that's active on install) will be used the most. And the majority of users will base their opinions on Grid by how well it's done.
Now, you want to create several default configs per class. That may be fine in some imaginary world where everyone likes bees, teddy bears and Tekkub. But people in our world are not like that. If a person does not like the 'default default' he won't like any other config because (it seems like) they'll be the same but with more/less.
Sure you can design 'different' defaults (in a sense of indicator placement, hooked statuses etc.) in a hope that someone will like one of them. But to me, it just looks like wasted time.
The ideal for me is: a user is presented with a one very clean default config for his class, an array of pregenarated statuses (some unhooked ones for more specialized stuff), and finaly (the most important part here), a very clean, intutive and simple way of altering the config (hooking statuses and creating/modifying indicators) so he does not spend hours setting it up.
If it's done, there will be no reason to have several defaults. It would be much faster and simpler to just check/uncheck some stuff and maybe create an additional indicator then to change between configs to see if one of them has the stuff you need.
ps. But the config topic is for another time I guess (indicator/location/status duh :/)