(Discussion moved from the Death Knight class mechanics thread.)

Currently available addons to track death knight rune cooldowns seem... lacking. There's probably a better way to show that information, one that it's easier to take in at a glance and doesn't take up too much screen space. I'm having trouble imagining what that would be, though. The traditional status bar / icon spinner frameworks don't seem up to the task.

What information do we want from a rune addon? In order of priority, I'd say:
1. Which runes are available NOW
2. Which runes are almost available
3. Whether the almost-available runes are available on the next GCD, or whether there's space to throw in another ability like Death Coil.
Ideally, an addon would show all this information such that point 1 is more visible than point 2, and so on.

What do we NOT need to know? What information can we throw out to make the display easier to read?
4. Whether it's the left blood rune or the right blood rune (for example) that's available.

The different addons we have highlight these things to different degrees. RuneHero, for example, is really good at points 2 and 3. Not so much at point 1, because moving things always attract your attention more than static things. This is the big failing of bar-based addons and those that put number text on icons. Available runes should stand out more than non-available ones. SimpleRune takes a different approach and is really good at points 1 and 2, but really bad at point 3.

For me, the big question is: what kind of graphical convention would cover all of these bases, in the order they need to be covered? Ideas?

I think that the runehero approach is an excellent one. We just need the 'ready' runes to flash fairly brightly and then fade in and out at you - that would be more noticeable than gradual and linear motion.

My mental picture: A vertical runehero (runes come down from the top). Active runes are fading in and out of brightness at you, moving ones are fairly dark - They flash when they hit bottom. Any period sufficient for an rp burn ability (no runes within 1.5 seconds before, period is 1.5s + long) is highlit weakly in gray, and flashes to white when entered. Optionally, a slight, pleasing sound would be played when you hit a rune as soon as it cooled down, or an rp burning ability as soon as you should.

Disease and HB cooldown timers would be a thin colored line behind the rune that was used to apply them last, or separate and to one side of the display (preferably an option to switch between those).

I'm not certain that the option of sticking an 'ideal' rotation' on there as an overlay of some kind would be workable, but if it is, it would certainly be handy - doing maximum dps would boil down to playing guitar hero/DDR.

This visual is pretty much totally ripped off from the Bard joke from April Fool's (and Guitar Hero/Rock Band games in general), in terms of icons cascading and crossing a line.

- Vertically oriented countdowns, one column per rune, scaled to the 10 second timer
- When a rune is used, its icon jumps to the top of the field, and starts moving down
- When a rune is available, its icon sits at the bottom of the field, pulsing in some visible way (point 1)
- The last 1.5 seconds of the vertical time scale should be a colored zone (red, maybe). Rune icons in this area indicate both almost availability (point 2) and if the area is empty (not red, maybe) that indicates that you have at least one GCD before another rune is ready.

I think you could set this up to be user-configurable as columns going up or down, or rows going left or right. You could also configure the ordering of columns (some users might want blood blood frost frost, or blood frost blood frost, or some other ordering).

I think your 1-3 ordering is the priority - which abilities you can use now matters the most, and then which abilities you can almost use; the "squeeze in one more shot before the GCD" is relevant only to people who really want to squeeze out optimal performance, which wouldn't be all mod users.

This visual display would be to my knowledge very complex to code, unfortunately.

(Edit: looks like Janraea and I have a similar mental image, and post at the same time :oD.)

There are so many add-ons that can be used for disease tracking. I agree that it might be nice for people who just want to install the one add-on, but make that part of it LoD or optional or something. Displaying runes is what's really important here, not reinventing debuff timer bars.

I'm considering something radial with a border for when you have hit the point of no return in GCD. I did a quick gif but it's kinda hard with the tools I have at work. the grey circle would represent the last chance before GCD. So if your runes are still inside it you're good to go otherwise you will be clipping. Also, the grey circle could be used to show the GCD itself heart beat style or with a sweep second hand kind of thing. I also thought about using the grey circle to show how much RP you have. Obviously I would want to add more game-like textures. I'm just trying to throw out some ideas.

Sample animation had trouble mocking it up but I'd like to shrink the runes when they are in the center in addition to fading:


or showing RP as fill:


or showing GCD as a sweep:

Funny idea, a DDRune addon, but left to right and more static is far easier to read.


Yeah, you'll want disease timers (FF and BP only) right next to your runes.

I think trying to show the time in more than one dimension, (the GCD sweep idea) is visually very confusing - gcd bars are easy to find on their own, so if the integration of gcd with rune display isn't going to add anything, it should just be left separate. The same goes for showing RP in the center fill - it's easy enough to show that elsewhere, putting it in the time-display doesn't gain anything.

I think your radial idea is very intriguing, and might be combineable with the old-style huds that used to be so popular. If our eyes stay focused near the character model, having a rune timer that causes runes to be near the center when they're close to ready (the reverse of the demonstrations you gave) would be convenient and natural.

edit:
A mockup of that idea seems too complicated, but runes would start out in a rough circle around the character (or maybe a semicircle), and would jump away from the center of the screen when used. They'd drift back in, toward a light circle, which represents cooled down, and become brighter and less clear (higher alpha) when they're available, or possibly in two steps: 1.5s from available and actually available. GCD could be shown as a thin gray circle/semicircle that moves from the 1.5s marker to the 0s marker. It'd be very busy, visually - I think it would be best as a semicircle, or smaller arc even, that puts the runes all below the character model. Ordered like (FUBBUF), maybe (So that paired FU runes would tend to be from the same side).

Janraea, You mean something like this:


I actually like it more than I thought I would.

Well if we're doing mockups here's the UI I was thinking would be useful:

2 blood runes available
0 frost runes avail, the next one is 1/6 off colldown
1 unholy rune avail, the next is 1/6 off cooldown

I was consider showing only three elements too but was having trouble finding a way to show double runes and Death runes when they are stacked. I like your thick border and can see how just making the rim purple could indicate death runes. hmmm, I'll have to sketch some more ideas and maybe show some mockups after I get home.

These are some great ideas! Two things:

Radial setups look neat, but they make it harder to determine which of two non-adjacent runes is available next. Like in Dristig's setup, it'd be kind of hard to tell if a blood rune or a frost rune would be up next. Linear setups make this comparison trivial.

Consolidation of runes helps a lot, in my opinion (point 4 in the OP). One thing i like about SimpleRune is that the rune of a specific type with the shortest cooldown is always displayed on the top row. It basically reduces the number of elements you had to watch from six down to three. It's the addon in the top right of dr_AllCOM3's movie. Here's a picture: