Addon Idea: Grid UI for enemy units???

[ycwii]

Not sure if this is a thing but I have been looking all over or it. If it isn't it could potentially be a good addon idea...

Im looking for an addon that will display all enemy units that are in combat in a list that I can manage somewhere on my screen.

I would use it to watch the health bars of adds and trash mobs in an organized and clean way. That way I can do the maximum dps to adds that are low on health then switch to adds with more health and make sure my dots are applied. also it would tell me if i should use my 2 enemy aoe rotation or my 3+ enemy rotation... it just generally would make my hunter life easier than it already is and im sure other classes could use it...

Basically something that looks like the addon "grid" but for any enemy units that are currently in combat with you or/and your raid.

or even a Tidyplates extension that would just take the plates and put them in a organized list somewhere in my screen. that way it dosent get all cluttered with the mobs and the rest of my ui.

Please let me know if you happen to know of something that would do this for me.

Thanks!

[Aleaa]

impossible 10chars

[dementedlogic]

Can you expand on why it's not technically possible?

[Aleaa]

1) to target something you need secure frames. you cant create/change secure frames while in combat.
2) addons cant select target by name.
3) addons can select target only by specific unit - target, focus, boss[1-5], arena[1-5], raid[1-40], party[1-4] and [unit]target etc

[Nihilan]

Its an API limitation.

[ycwii]

1) to target something you need secure frames. you cant create/change secure frames while in combat.
2) addons cant select target by name.
3) addons can select target only by specific unit - target, focus, boss[1-5], arena[1-5], raid[1-40], party[1-4] and [unit]target etc

Darn... Well thanks for entertaining my idea I guess it may be something to open a blue post about and hope for a future feature.

Thanks all

[Overdispersion]

Darn... Well thanks for entertaining my idea I guess it may be something to open a blue post about and hope for a future feature.

Thanks all

Well trust me, if this were possible, it certainly would've been created a long time ago. ^^

[SlippyCheeze]

Darn... Well thanks for entertaining my idea I guess it may be something to open a blue post about and hope for a future feature.

Do that, but you will find that this is a deliberate, by-design choice on the part of the game designers, so they are unlikely to move. Not impossible, just unlikely. (...and no, I'm not clear why they think this adds value to the game, but they apparently do.)

[ComputerNerd]

There have been many addons over the years doing various forms of multi-target trackers for dots etc.
This request of having click-able frames isn't new and comes up regularly, and so asking on the forums isn't going to achieve anything.
It is by choice.

[shanthi]

Far be it from me to speak for Blizzard, but it probably comes down to an aesthetic choice. As game designers, they likely feel that it's a better, more fun game if players need to find the targets they want to damage out in the game world (counting nameplates as part of the game world, since they move with the mobs), rather than clicking a group of boxes. It also creates some stylistic gameplay difference from healing, which is very box-targeting oriented.

Personally, I'm ambivalent. I think DPS is perfectly fun as is, but I don't have any particular philosophical objections to enabling a "DPS Grid" playstyle. The fact that healers do it does show that it's a viable and fun way to play the game for many players. I guess the main problem is that it would probably be significantly more efficient, so players who don't prefer that style would be stuck having to play that way or DPSing sub-optimally. Again, I find either choice by Blizzard on this topic defensible.

[rowaasr13]

Don't expect it to exist. WoW only gives you direct access to party/raid, target, mouseover, pet and some other units, but not to all individual enemies. There are some workarounds through scanning nameplates or each raid member target if it just so happens that every enemy is targeted by at least one raid member (which is not that common), but it they all are clumsy and prone to breaking.

[Znuff]

Not impossible. It has been done. Got proof of concept. Author too lazy to develop concept further.

[SlippyCheeze]

Not impossible. It has been done. Got proof of concept. Author too lazy to develop concept further.

It is impossible to achieve the "click to target" part of this; the closest you could get would be "click to target by name" which would not work for duplicate adds, etc.

You can show fakey frames that are not click to target, and can't be used for, eg, mousehover casting, and stuff. That is definitely possible, though you can only update health when something makes it accessible in the normal target description pool and/or you can guess it based on healing and harming combat log events.

So, yeah, it's mixed. Not completely impossible, but definitely not completely possible either.

(Caveat: if this is possible it exceeds Blizzards designed limitation of addons, so (a) I don't know about it, and (b) it's one of those exploit => broken things that sometimes crop up.

[Znuff]

I'll say only this: Nameplates :-)

[SlippyCheeze]

I'll say only this: Nameplates :-)

You can say that all you want, but they don't solve the interaction issues, because you can't reposition the interactive part of them. You /can/ tie them to a unit guid *if* they have been targetted or moused over, though, but you still can't directly connect to them. (...or see the caveat above.)

I mean, I'm not saying that it isn't possible to do some stuff with it, but the API just doesn't let you build the secure unit stuff needed to make this work otherwise.

[Aleaa]

I'll say only this: Nameplates :-)

addons can't create nameplates. only remove textures from them and create new unsecure frames to replace visual part of it. You still clicking on real blizzard nameplates ( without textures)

[Znuff]

because you can't reposition the interactive part of them.

Actually that's not true. They're very much clickable.

I do have a working demo of it. The author made a few versions of that concept, one is actually arranged in a nice grid. It's just that... in someone else's words, "just because you can, doesn't mean you should". It's easy to see that if such an addon would be made publicly available and become popular there's no way to know how would Blizzard react and whatever they will break. They kind of made it clear over the years that they don't really want such a functionality.

Anyway, I'm not trying to troll or anything. All I'm saying is that you shouldn't use the word "impossible".

[semlar]

To elaborate, I have no interest in wasting my time developing an addon that could potentially have functionality removed from the api despite the fact that it's really not an exploit.

Healers have stationary unit frames, there are boss unit frames, there are floating unit frames above their heads; realistically I don't believe arranging them in a fixed location is something blizzard should care much about.

It would be a bit biased to say dps should have a more difficult time finding their target than healers for no particular reason, is it somehow more enjoyable or skillful to have to tab through everything onscreen?

[Sierra85]

you could however, make something that could target specific bosses. or boss1, boss2, boss3 etc.

[Znuff]

Those are called unit frames and they already exist...