I'm holding out hope between this change and the introduction of Mass Dispel, Blizzard is affirming it wont be introducing new dispel clickfests in The Burning Crusade. I'm still quite leery though, considering there's no Mass Remove Curse nor Mass Abolish Poison.
You must not be Horde? Shaman have a Poison Cleanse Totem, this isn't instant poison removal from the whole raid unless you have 8 Shaman but it'll usually get the job done.
This really won't make things that much worse for good groups and it'll make button mashing groups with poor positioning die which is fine to me. Sure decursive is nice but if your MC raid had groups actually positioned and decursers assigned to those groups they could clear them out just fine still. For groups that just stand in a big semicirclejerk or all over the place randomly they'll get cursed and die, GG. I'm happy to see the difficulty going up as this game is pretty easy as it stands now.
Decursive was overpowered but this really seems like they chopped off their foot to get rid of a hangnail.
There are a lot of mods that are now effectively useless. As a healer this change just means I have to replace my pretty raid frames and some customized RDX frames with the vastly inferior product offered by blizzard. Not being able to target is the real screwjob. I can deal without click cast but not even being able to target party memebers makes those mods have no value at all.
The Blizzard UI does not give you the option of presenting the data in a useful way so it is absurd to destroy the mods that do.
I understand blizzard's desire to break decursive, but I don't really understand the changes to targetting. as a healer I rely very heavily on target of target's target to see what is going on, I'd pretty much have to relearn how to see who is attacking whom, which is a gigantic pain for no purpose that I can tell. Is there something abusive about the current targetting functions that I'm not aware of?
I understand blizzard's desire to break decursive, but I don't really understand the changes to targetting. as a healer I rely very heavily on target of target's target to see what is going on, I'd pretty much have to relearn how to see who is attacking whom, which is a gigantic pain for no purpose that I can tell. Is there something abusive about the current targetting functions that I'm not aware of?
i'm assuming they regard those mods as removing the intuitive and observant part of being a healer. I don't use decursive but I do use another mod which simply throws up names on a screen of people who need decursed, which lets me target them, then I press my hotkey to dispel. I guess their option is for us to pay attention to debuff animations or something? :p
I must be seriously out of the loop because I've been healing raids for a year and I have no clue what fastcast is.
Fast cast is more for nukers, especially high latency ones.
The spell progress bar is a client only thing. This is why sometimes your spells seem to finish when there is still progress to be made on the bar and sometimes even after your bar completes the spell has not landed.
The role of fastcast is to approximate when the server has thinks you will be done with the spell so you can start casting a second one. It does a SpellStopCasting() to clear your cast bar so that your client will let you start the 2nd spell instead of waiting for the first one to be acknowledged from the server.
Originally Posted by http://www.wowinterface.com/downloads/fileinfo.php?id=4733
Fastcast is an addon specifically written for those of us who play World of Warcraft on high latency connections, and aims to reduce the effect of that latency on spell casting to a more trivial amount. By default, the game client only allows a new spell to be cast when it receives notfication from the realm server that the previous spell has finished casting, which can considerably reduce your spell-casting speed when things are laggy, adding 0.5 seconds or even more to the time it takes to cast a spell before you can cast another one.
Fastcast implements a fast casting method that is based on a macro solution from Rusrusrusrus and described by Astos in the official Blizzard UI forums for manually cancelling a current spellcast "early" so as to allow a new spell to begin casting without interrupting the already cast spell. The solution that Fastcast adopts is based around looking at the timing of when the client started the spell casting action, and then adds a small amount of padding to this to try and accommodate variations in the client to server round trip time, removing the guess work out of when to try and start casting the next spell.
Fastcast works with both normal cast-time spells, and channeled spells. In addition for channeled spells, Fastcast provides the original feature of Channelcast as well, allowing you to protect your channeled spells from being accidentally interrupted by you pressing your channeled spell action key or button a second time. Fastcast extends this to allow per-character setting of the maximum time for which your channeled spells are protected, giving you better control for when you want some channeled spells to deliberately be recastable.
Originally Posted by Fric
Fingering a girl while she argues with her husband-to-be is perhaps my new low point morally in my horribly debauched life
Clickfests like Lucifron, Chromaggus, Bug Family and Noth are just plain silly.
Note there is one of these clickfests in EVERY 40-man dungeon so far. Removing decursive is like removing target icons and /assist, then saying they were overpowered, dumbed down encounters, and people should be smart enough to figure out their targets. Blizzard has added a ton of stuff to simplify the tedium of raids for dps classes, but healers/dispellers are getting the shaft.
Complain all you'd like, but this will likely lead to at least some healers getting exhausted by their class. I'll admit the only thing that kept me attending MC as long as I did was emergency monitor macro healing.
This is beyond lame. Given Blizzard's usual tendency to be nice to players, I think this decision (which serves no purpose but to annoy players) can only be explained in one way:
UI designers and encounter designers are not communicating well enough. Someone doing UI thought this stuff was "too powerful" (i.e. he's read too many rants by idiots about how our mods were "playing the game for us"), didn't truly understand the effect on design, and made a sweeping change to step down the overall amount of automation by a gross level.
The result is change which is exactly enough to impede design, while adding . . . what? More clicking for players, without more decision-making for players, which is what the game is supposed to be about.
UI is supposed to be a transparent way in which I interface with the game world. Barring the direct neural hookup, the best you can do is to allow players the freedom to organize the torrent of incoming information in whatever way is most efficient for them, and return back to the game the information containing their decisions in whichever way is most intuitive.
I've thought about starting a thread on this forum about the effect of custom UI on game design. Maybe now I will. I want to see how many people realize that the UI is one of the strongest part of the whole game, and absolutely shapes the face of the entire raid game as we see it today.
According to the discussion on the RDX member-only pages, it appears from what a few people have said that macros with strung together spell casts using /script commands will also be broken. ie, no more 'lazy rogue' mods/macros that let you spam one button to keep using abilities, or a caster mod that casts one spell and then another one right after with another keypress.
I don't know about clickfests, they're annoying in 40mans but not that bad in 20mans. You only dispel people who need to be dispelled. In AQ20 there's only the poison bolt stuff from the trash, and it's targeted depoison so it's not really hard. In ZG the mass dispel part is jindo's trash, but you can effictively do this part by just decursing like 3-4people in your whole group.
Also as far as I understand, you won't be able to click to dispel instantly, or assign a key to autotarget and click. However, you can still use ctra unit frames to dispel your raid. So why wouldn't an addon like perfectraid/ozraid atm move the people needing dispels on top, or have an "emergency" window with only dispels popping. All you'd have to do is click then press dispel. Sure it's one more key each time, but that doesn't feel really hard or that annoying to me. I have Clique installed but only use it to cast renews, I use keybindings to cast all my heals. I don't really see an issue with this, especially with less people in raids. I also often click on people directly on the screen(like I click their char), because it's the fastest way to target when you see something like a bolt flying to them, or a mob running to them. That and click mob/assist/heal.
Took me quite some time to setup my UI on my healer, but most of it was spent trying to look for a non intrusive raid unit frames mod that wouldn't take half my screen. I don't find healing boring or annoying compared to dpsing, and I don't use clique or decursive that much(well I do use it on chromaggus cause I'm usually on disease AND magic, that's pretty annoying). They'll probably stop with the let's decurse everything before 10secs thing and just have targeted bombs on 2-3people at once with a 5secs time to dispel. If they don't, you can still count on having 5dispellers for 25people(shamans/priest/paladins/druids), so 5people to dispel each, much like a 5man. You can dispel 5mans without decursive.
Oh and obviously, they're probably nto done with their UI. I'd be surprised if they didn't add more of their new stuff that work exactly like current addons(SCT) before BC is out
So why wouldn't an addon like perfectraid/ozraid atm move the people needing dispels on top, or have an "emergency" window with only dispels popping. All you'd have to do is click then press dispel. Sure it's one more key each time, but that doesn't feel really hard or that annoying to me.
That's what I do now; the current mod I use simply lists people needing debuffs. I target whichever person needs it the most (it lists class) and then click my dispel key. Unlike decursive I can't bind the actual mod to any key and have it look for a target itself. I was to understand that the UI change would break this as well though, or am I incorrect?
How do all the people 2-clicking healing and cleansing move? - doesn't mouse to target, key to cast hamper your mobilty and reaction time to the environment?
This change goes WAY beyond decursive guys - the click cast is going to hurt many healers. This isn't about a mod doing something for you, with RDX6 I have multiple heals bound to mouse clicks on the RDX interface - I simply click the name with the appropriate button and RDX6 targets that person and casts the spell. The loss of that is going to make healing much much more like Whack-A-Mole than it already is.
How do all the people 2-clicking healing and cleansing move? - doesn't mouse to target, key to cast hamper your mobilty and reaction time to the environment?
It's never hampered me before; it's one click to target the person and use the heal hotkey /shrug Once the person is targeted your mouse is free to move and if you're using the mouse to target, wasd works in a quick pinch.
And yea Whack-A-Mole is exactly what I was thinking with the change; infuriating if it goes through.
As a healer this change just means I have to replace my pretty raid frames and some customized RDX frames with the vastly inferior product offered by blizzard. Not being able to target is the real screwjob. I can deal without click cast but not even being able to target party memebers makes those mods have no value at all.
The Blizzard UI does not give you the option of presenting the data in a useful way so it is absurd to destroy the mods that do.
I agree. However, I think there's a great upside to this change. With the removal of TargetUnit() and TargetByName(), Blizzard is effectively limiting single-target heals/dispels to your own group and removing the necessity of viewing 25 raid frames. I really don't have a problem with that. In fact, I embrace it as it promotes raid role diversity (ie, healing classes can contribute DPS when their groups don't require healing). This gives a reason for balanced raid composition as well as forcing healers/dispellers in each group to pull their own weight.
This change goes WAY beyond decursive guys - the click cast is going to hurt many healers. This isn't about a mod doing something for you, with RDX6 I have multiple heals bound to mouse clicks on the RDX interface - I simply click the name with the appropriate button and RDX6 targets that person and casts the spell. The loss of that is going to make healing much much more like Whack-A-Mole than it already is.
You sometimes have an enormous discrepancy between your avatar and the tone of your post.
Are we sure this going to break? Character names only have one word--if /target still exists, aren't you still just fine where raid members are concerned?
As a healer this change just means I have to replace my pretty raid frames and some customized RDX frames with the vastly inferior product offered by blizzard. Not being able to target is the real screwjob. I can deal without click cast but not even being able to target party memebers makes those mods have no value at all.
The Blizzard UI does not give you the option of presenting the data in a useful way so it is absurd to destroy the mods that do.
I agree. However, I think there's a great upside to this change. With the removal of TargetUnit() and TargetByName(), Blizzard is effectively limiting single-target heals/dispels to your own group and removing the necessity of viewing 25 raid frames. I really don't have a problem with that. In fact, I embrace it as it promotes raid role diversity (ie, healing classes can contribute DPS when their groups don't require healing). This gives a reason for balanced raid composition as well as forcing healers/dispellers in each group to pull their own weight.
This is just a roundabout way of saying "vastly restricting encounter design."
You sometimes have an enormous discrepancy between your avatar and the tone of your post.
I don't get it. :o
Originally Posted by Arawethion
Are we sure this going to break? Character names only have one word--if /target still exists, aren't you still just fine where raid members are concerned?
The click casting for healing in the raid was the first thing that Veni mentioned as being broken by this. He said he is already thinking up some workarounds to it, but the reason he released this bit of info was because it will initially break a core function of RDX if it goes live.
UI is supposed to be a transparent way in which I interface with the game world. Barring the direct neural hookup, the best you can do is to allow players the freedom to organize the torrent of incoming information in whatever way is most efficient for them, and return back to the game the information containing their decisions in whichever way is most intuitive.
And the incoming changes to the UI have little to no effect on the way information will be organized and relayed to the player. Mods like Decursive did not "organize the torrent" of debuffs present on a raid and "return back to the game the information containing their decision." Mods like Decursive removed the need for a player to even be aware of that portion of the game.
In fact, a lot of the mods that these changes will be doing away with are mods that make decisions for and take actions on the part of the player. I've never used them, and I know too many players that have become lazy and poor players because they do. Frankily, I'm not going to cry that the people I group with will need to pay more attention and make better decisions, or otherwise be unable to perform on the needed level.
So, whammo. Not only will the smaller raid size quell the moochers, but so will the sweeping out of their crutches, slings and wheelchairs.
edit: As for the death of click-casting, well, innocent casuality of war. I don't know about it, as I've never, or known anyone that has, used a click-casting mod.
And the incoming changes to the UI have little to no effect on the way information will be organized and relayed to the player.
And there's where you're wrong.
From Gibybo of Conquest on the RDX boards:
Originally Posted by Gibybo
Yeah targeting frames work in the same way as ActionButtons now, protected in combat :(
Think about the implications of this; locked targeting frames in combat. Nothing dynamically updating.
No more main assist windows. No more anything that resembles an emergency moniter. Glad I don't play a decursing or healing class, welcome to the world of staring at 25 bars.
If it used to dynamically update during combat, it won't anymore. The more I think about it, the more this has to just be some internal testing restriction. They can't be serious about this, or at the very least haven't thought through the effects of it.
I wouldn't want to do Noth fight without decursive :/
Anyhow, a better solution to the healing addons which pick target/rank/everything instead of your right now, would be to have fights where the majority of healing needed cannot be based on the current set of data you have. Predicting who is going to take damage and react before it actually happens is the fun and challenging part of healing imo.
As long as reactive healing is possible, there will be optimized algorithms that will do it as good or better than a human can and I really don't see any reason to disallow those.
If they make it impossible for an addon to show the current information you have in a better way than the default UI or to have the addon well...do something, then what's the point of having addons at all?
And the incoming changes to the UI have little to no effect on the way information will be organized and relayed to the player. Mods like Decursive did not "organize the torrent" of debuffs present on a raid and "return back to the game the information containing their decision." Mods like Decursive removed the need for a player to even be aware of that portion of the game.
In fact, a lot of the mods that these changes will be doing away with are mods that make decisions for and take actions on the part of the player. I've never used them, and I know too many players that have become lazy and poor players because they do. Frankily, I'm not going to cry that the people I group with will need to pay more attention and make better decisions, or otherwise be unable to perform on the needed level.
So, whammo. Not only will the smaller raid size quell the moochers, but so will the sweeping out of their crutches, slings and wheelchairs.
edit: As for the death of click-casting, well, innocent casuality of war. I don't know about it, as I've never, or known anyone that has, used a click-casting mod.
My comments were more in reference to the effect on click-casting, and much more importantly, on customizable raid frames. What I said clearly pertains to those.
I understand that what I said doesn't necessarily apply to Decursive. Assuming you could easily break decursive without messing with other things, it would at least be a reasonable design decision (though not necessarily one I'd agree with).
It's simply a neutral change. Good encounters can be designed around the presence or abscene of Descursive, and both can be fun. It is not a change which is worth making an ill-conceived, broadside attack against many things which improve our play experience.
10/06/06, 10:20 AM
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