MagicRunes is definitely an improvement over the standard UI, but my biggest problem so far is finding screen real estate. It's not just that I have to find a permanent spot for a block of 7 timer bars, it's that I have to find space that's *also* near my dottimers so that I don't have to be glancing all over the place to find my disease times.

One big thing that appears redundant to me is the Runic Power bar. I'm pretty sure we've all got that visible on the screen somewhere else near our characters already, and are used to looking for it there from playing other classes with mana, rage etc.

Someone earlier in the thread asked why there are two bar bars for each rune type. I'm not positive if this would be viable, but what about a layout that has only 3 bars, but 2 cooldown sparks? When you're hitting strikes, it's really only relevant if you have 1 of the necessary runes available at any one time, not both. That could definitely cut down on the clutter of having so many bars.

The runic power bar has an option to be hidden (at least last time I checked).

That said, I'm not using Magic Runes just yet because of lack of a good place for it, as you mentioned. It's just too big.

Looked all over the options and never found one to hide the runic power, I guess I must have missed it.

Thinking more about the idea of a 3 bar setup rather than 6... what if there are 6 bars, 2 for each rune, each set to 50% opacity and set atop one another. When both runes are available, the combined opacity would make the bar solid. If you use 1 rune your bar will drop to 50% opacity as the rune refreshes. The cooldown for the rune you used is gradually filling the bar back to solid with a spark at the end. When it gets within a GCD, it flashes using the features that are already there.

If you use both runes of the same type under this model, the opacity levels will tell you both how much time you have left before 1 becomes available, and approximately how far the other rune is behind the first, just like now. I really don't think there's any information being lost by stacking the rune bars is there? It even solves the problem of having FU runes together since there's no more duplication. You don't have to do any fancy sorting.

edit: Took a moment on my lunch break to try and mock up the above description in photoshop, as well as one other layout idea using split bars. Hope these are found interesting by someone who can actually code, god knows I can't. I dug around in the code to see how the bars were made but it's far beyond my ability.

First image shows 1 Blood rune on cooldown, and both Unholy:



Second image shows both Blood on cooldown, and 1 Frost:



Of the two, I still think overlapping is the most efficient use of space, but the split one might be clearer to read. It has the advantage of space to put cooldown counts for all 6 bars, whereas overlapping would probably need to just show the shortest cooldown. Using a good bar texture or the flash function could let you know when you're within GCD range, and you could compress the vertical size even more to save space, especially if you use custom rune icons.

Under Bar Configuration you can disable/enable any of the 7 bars. As for the combined layout, I like it both as options. I think the overlapping one is almost because you can easier compare the cooldown of multiple runes. With bars going in different directions it's harder at a glance to see the difference. Here's one question though - how do you handle death runes? A 4th bar?

Glad you like the idea. As for Death runes, just shade the bar a different color like purple (or whatever the user sets). Really, this is like having 2 sets of 3 runes overlapping. Whichever one turns into a death rune, just recolor that bar to represent it. It oughta be enough of a visual, especially since no spec will be turning more than 1 rune type into death runes.

I'll knock together a mockup in a bit. Right now I'm leveling

I can't download MagicRunes on this computer (don't ask), but is it possible to have the bar coming from the right to the left in the same style as the first screenshot in your original post about it? Thanks in advance.

is there an option to hide the bars out of combat, im using the vertical bottom setup, but i only to see the bars if im incombat.

i dont see any good reason why they should be visible out of combat, apart from RP bar.

if its possible, how can i do it, cause i didnt find it anywhere.

Thank in advance.

You have a good point here: there's only so much information you can work with at a time. On the other hand, knowing that a rune is within the "grace period" is quite useful. Perhaps having runes that are "overdue" to be used (ie, out of the 2 second grace period) be shown in a slightly brighter colour. Only enough for you to notice, not so much as to demand that you think "ok, this is still a rune of type x". Idea being the information is there, you can use it if your mind isn't reeling yet, but it doesn't shove itself right on your face forcing you to consider it.

You can change the Alpha (opacity) of the rune bars when out of combat, not ready, blocked by GCD, etc. It's a basic feature of the addon.

Personally, after having played my DK significantly, OmniCC seems to make a Rune mod pretty useless in most situations. It gives the cooldown for each ability based on Rune cooldowns. Can't tell me if I have 2 Deathrunes up or what, but I know my priority rotation, so I've been doing okay w/o the Rune bars... so far. The Runic Power bar has been most helpful. I, personally, didn't have one of anywhere. Just on my player frame (upper left) and very hard to see. Having more options to make this counter more obvious or bigger or to hide it out of combat would be great.

Cruddy attempt to mock up a death rune on an overlapped layout:



The icon was added just as a little bit of extra visual reminder, and also to indicate if you've got a death rune up behind the main bar.

Death runes are funny. You really only care about them if you don't have the rune you want on cooldown, and the game is intelligent enough to use your normal runes up first if you have them available (ie. Scourge Strike will use normal FU runes before using up Death runes). Because of this, the Death rune should alway be on the lowest level, behind normal runes when it's available. You'll only care about them when the rune in front is cooling down, which means you can always see the death rune bar when you actually need it.

One important thing that this layout won't work without: the rune with the longest remaining cooldown should always be the front bar, and the one closest to refreshing should be the back bar. This also applies to Death runes, which should then fall back as normal. If the cooldowns don't shift places, you could miss cooldowns. Opacity levels can go a long way to making it clear where the bars overlap one another, but if someone wanted to use 100% opaque bars it would require that they shift positions intelligently. I doubt that's hard to code, just shift the cooldown with the longest remaining time (emptiest bar) or shortest remaining time (for reverse fill) to the highest layer. Then again, I'm ignorant of LUA so that might be harder than I think.

Okay, I downloaded MagicRunes for use with my new DK. It showed up in it's default configuration, but I see no way to configure it. I believe my system is having graphics issues with the displaying of things because Omen3 shows up completely transparent and I can't even get the configuration window to show up. So, how do you configure MagicRunes? Does it have a tab in the add-ons section in Blizzards interface? Does it have a slash command? Am I supposed to be seeing something if I right-click, ctrl-click whatever on the default MagicRunes display? All I seem to be able to do is move it around all over the screen. It currently does absolutely nothing other than occupy screen space. Again, I suspect that the installation of WotLK may have changed some settings for my graphics preferences that may not play nicely with my particular graphics card.

Any help would be appreciated.

Has there been any thought of including a "DoT Timer" for Frost Fever and Blood Plague. Or should debuff tracking be left to a separate addon?

I'm using NeedToKnow for those timers. If you make them the right length, you can even have them line up temporally with the rune bars (doesn't turn out to be that important yet. Maybe in raids it'll matter.)

I agree that OmniCC appears to be quite useful. However, it seems to be quite buggy, especially when you have Death Runes. I don't think it is the fault of the mod, but infact whatever it is on Blizzard's end, as the shaded clockwheel (whatever it's called) is wrong too. It will do things like show Bone Shield as having no cooldown when Unholy runes come up, even though it's on cooldown, or it will show things Death/Scourge Strike as being on cooldown when I have adequate Death Runes up, and it doesn't correct itself most of the time until I use the ability.

For Runic Power I thought about using a standalone floating number that simply shows your current RP, no bars or anything. I tried it, but it just seemed to get in the way, mostly because I have a rather typical player frame in bottom center.

I've been using my 6pack version of RuneHero. I may do a complete rewrite of what runehero code is left and upload it to wowinterface.com if there is any interest. The "one place to look" aspect has been working really well for me.

I like Magicrune, along with Ellipsis or quartz DoT timers, it's a handy monitor of what is going on. Incorporating a Disease timer into Magic Rune, I think would almost make it perfect

I think RuneWatch with the disease tracker is pretty optimal.
Although, that just helps with tracking of RP and Runes refreshing.
ShockAndAwe would be a good example of something that might give a bit more visual feel to the runes actually coming off CD, with a GCD watch integrated.

I just uploaded my Rune Tracker to wowinterface.com it is called Rune Pack. As mentioned before it is based on Rune Hero but I did a tone of streamlining and rewriting. I went with the 6pack layout that I posted earlier. Let me know if you download it.

Rune Pack : WoWInterface Downloads : Death Knight

It's funny, now that I've really gotten a feel for my DK, I was just going to add my own input as to what I wanted, and would like to see in a rune tracker, but this just about covers that for me. It's good stuff, simple, with all the information easily readable and right where I want it. Well, almost all - something to track the diseases would complete the wish list.

Once I hit 80 I put the finishing touches on my UI, after realizing a lot of my timers (especially rune timers) weren't in a good enough spot.

I've really been liking RunePack. The RP display is simple but effective, and easily customized with a little .lua tweaking. The Rune display is install and go, and I find it to be extremely good at showing all the elements previously mentioned. What I feel puts it above any other is because the runes are centered coming in, it's a lot more obvious when you miss a rune based attack than any other display.

Have to just add my recommendation for people without a rune addon to try runepack. I tried magicrune and found it very unintuitive and tbh a little confusing.

I would very strongly recommend Runepack to anyone, it really is that good. All the info is centralised, and very easy to see 'at a glance' how long you have on rune CDs and what you have available.

Thank you to the author, I was beginning to think i'd never get the hang of my rune CDs.

Edit: Currently all my guilds DKs have downloaded and are using this to track rune CD's. So far every one of them has loved it.

I hope I don't get in trouble for pimping my own addon but since it came from this thread I figure it is ok. If you have downloaded Runepack in the last couple of days keep an eye on the wowinterface page. It is definitely a work in progress so there will be frequent updates. I am a designer by trade so I can't stop tweaking the art. I will be uploading another set of textures today. If I go too far or make it less usable let me know on the wowinterface page. I recently made the rune click-through-able in my dev environment. I'm also working hard on a GUI control panel for it.

Thanks for all the great feedback.