In Combat Group Changes

Derrida · 04/10/07, 5:10 PM

With all of the class and group synergies we've seen crop up in tbc, group making decisions are both more complicated and more important than they were in wow-vanilla. I've been shifting shamans from tank groups temporarily to drop heroism for dps groups and back as well as shifting shadow priests(or others into their group) around to balance mana return for healers on endurance fights like tidewalker and fathom-lord.

My question is this: Is anyone using macro commands or mods to make this easier to do? Opening the raid frame and dragging people around can be very hectic midpull. I'm far from a macro/mod guru and no one in the raid community on my server has been able to provide me with any insight on this.

◊ Quigon · 04/10/07, 5:35 PM

Raid restore was built with this partially in mind. They stopped us from doing this a while ago... sure made KT p1 and p2 transitions a bit simpler on me though. Basically the paradigm is, everyone should be equal, mods or not.

Of course, the reality is this is an absurd joke for anyone who has actually used a custom GUI and knows the power and real differences in player performance using one.

You have to do this shit by hand, and its annoying. Sometimes the gui locks up too, and you can't even switch people mid combat. Stupid!

Delc · 04/10/07, 5:40 PM

Pre 2.0 you could script this, but I'm pretty sure as part of the UI system overhaul the functions that handle this were restricted to out of combat only.

• Arawethion · 04/10/07, 5:44 PM

Originally Posted by Quigon

You have to do this shit by hand, and its annoying. Sometimes the gui locks up too, and you can't even switch people mid combat. Stupid!

Specifically, this always happens to me if try to make two swaps without closing and re-opening the window. The first one always works fine. I've gotten used to doing the open-swap-close really quickly.

What prevents you from programmatically swapping groups mid-combat? I thought it was only because I'd been too lazy to set up RaidRestore again.
EDIT: Okay, I guess it's fine that I never bothered, then.

• Arawethion · 04/10/07, 5:46 PM

Another thing--crappy raid windows get confused when you swap mid-combat. Most specifically, I had someone report that this was happening with default raid frames.

◊ Anias · 04/10/07, 6:01 PM

If you could script group changes you could build decursive based on group changes (yes it's a silly way to do it, but you could do it) so...

There's a lot of silly overhead in the UI as a result of developers fighting very hard to maintain pointless rote tasks in place of creative gameplay. Par for the course. I enjoy the customizability of the wow UI, but I do mourn the loss of raid restore.

Shockingly, I believe that sometimes simplicity and convenience should win out over challenge.

It's probably harder for arthritics to play chess with burning pieces, but that hasn't made FIDE declare the "Chess on Fire" events to be the new standard.

Elsia · 04/11/07, 9:09 AM

Not really what you are looking for but I used RaidTemplate (http://wow-en.curse-gaming.com/downl.../raidtemplate/) extensively in vanilla to sort groups quickly for different fights. It wasn't detailed enough to make this a one-click affair and certainly doesn't allow you to swap two specific people.

An enhanced raidtemplate that allows you to swap certain functions (pala, shammy, spriest) in a specific way would certainly be helpful.

On the note of protected windows, did they fix the bug where you couldn't access your spellbook in combat? Have to check tonight. Swapping folks mid-combat mostly worked last time I got to try. Not sure if the raid window can still get stuck and untogglable in combat.