Raid Tanking Nameplate Glow

[Delanna]

This issue has been bothering me for some time, but with the reintroduction of trash in ICC, i figured it was actually time to post about it.

The blizzard nameplates (as well as addons like aloft and Tidyplate) have glow effects that change depending on whether or not the mob is attacking you.


Here's the question, is there a way to get the nameplates to display different glows if a mob is attacking another tank, as opposed to attacking a DPS. Such a change would make it easier to identify loose mobs in a trash tanking environment, and greatly reduce the number of deaths to untanked mobs.

[acapela]

Originally Posted by Delanna ...is there a way to get the nameplates to display different glows if a mob is attacking another tank, as opposed to attacking a DPS.

i know if nothing that does this, currently.

anything that attempts to distinguish among/between "target-of-target" would require a unitid. that means this would not be possible in a generic AoE sense (i.e. not possible on all mobs indiscriminately). someone in the group (at least a pet) would have to have a hostile unit targeted in order to generate a target unitid and determine that unit's "target-of-target" and change the color of the glow.

assuming a situation where you are using an off-tank, and the off-tank has the unit targeted, this should generally be possible (at least for that unit), at least in terms of having a unitid.

however, there is also the problem of simply identifying nameplates (in particular, when tanking trash, multiple mobs can have the same name, level, maximum health, and etc... the nameplates are effectively indistinguishable, and Blizzard provides absolutely no help with this). Aloft uses raid target assignments (icons) to identify nameplates (can detect their presence on nameplates graphically). while this is better than nothing, the question becomes: does your group religiously assign icons to all trash before your pull? can you assign icons to spawns during the fight? this can get pretty tricky.

anyway, i will add this to my TODO list for Aloft. should be possible to implement it at some point, withing the restrictions described above (i.e. need a groupmember to have a target, need an icon assigned).

[Delanna]

I appreciate the response. I had assumed there were some annoying technical limitations behind this, or it would have been done earlier.


Just for my own curiocity, you're saying that you'd need BOTH someone targeting the mob in question, and a target assigned to the mob in order to distinguish one nameplate from another within the code? Neither feature really breaks usefulness of the system, but the need to mar every mob is sorta annoying, but for the functionality it would probably be worth it, all things considered.

[acapela]

Originally Posted by Delanna I had assumed there were some annoying technical limitations behind this, or it would have been done earlier.

yeah, Blizzard basically wants you to actually have a target before it is willing to tell you much about a hostile unit.

Aloft can always identify the player's current target nameplate (graphically, via nameplate alpha), so for hostile units (mana, detailed numerical threat data, etc), Aloft is often limited to the player's current target.

Blizzard doesn't provide any sort of "addon functionality" for nameplates. they are just graphical objects. there is no association of any kind with who-is-who. various bits of nameplate text/statusbar data can provide things like unit name, unit level, current/max health, and a few other things (like: raid target icon). but that is it.

Just for my own curiocity, you're saying that you'd need BOTH someone targeting the mob in question, and a target assigned to the mob in order to distinguish one nameplate from another within the code? Neither feature really breaks usefulness of the system, but the need to mar every mob is sorta annoying, but for the functionality it would probably be worth it, all things considered.

yep. a friendly groupmember (at least a pet) targeting the mob, plus a raid target assignment (icon).

that raid target assignment was the only thing i could find associated with nameplates themselves (as graphical UI objects) that could provide any reliable linkage between the graphical nameplate and the general universe of unit information that is useful to players.

so, Aloft tracks groupmember targets continuously, and records the GUIDs of all targeted hostile units as those targets change. as well, when a raid target is assigned to a hostile unit, Aloft associates the assigned icon with the GUID of the hostile unit. then, when it sees a nameplate with an icon on it, it can connect the dots, use those tracked GUIDs to figure out which friendly groupmember unitid(s) (if any) have that unit targeted, and use one of those unitids to provide whatever information the player wants (target-of-target, detailed numeric AOE threat versus the player, and presumably at some point buffs/debuffs as well). intricate, but workable.