What kind of UI customization does healers want?

[Nicki_Minaj]

There are a few things that drive me crazy and most of them are UI:

 

-In PvP, I would like to make my own marks that show up on my ops. Make the ops names interchangable/draggable like abilities. For example I would love to know that my name is always on the top left every single match, and not top left this match and bottom right the next.

 

-I would also like to color-code my bars so I can read them easier. I should be top left in green, and the next healer can be top right in green. I can move my tanks below the other healer and myself and make them blue. All DPS can stay red. If someone picks up the Huttball, keep them in the same space but make their color purple or something and make it a preset. (Change Ops color when Hutball is picked up (enabled/disabled should be simple.)

 

A few mild ones that aren't related to my ops:

 

Currently if there is a group zerg (there is almost always a group zerg) it is difficult for me to see the name of the Huttball carrier. If there a bunch of people hurting my ball handler, I can't pick his name out of the crowd. Is it Reyn?Or is it Party Time Jandas'inyoface Skystalker? I don't care about anyone's Legacy last name, or their title. I want their name to match my ops list so I can easily see who I need to put my heals on.

 

Make the energy bars sink up for healers. If I am at surpluss energy and two people are dying and this isn't an emergency situation, I pick the person who is A) in my guild or B) has more energy. Obviously bounty hunters get the shaft more often than not. Likewise Sith Warriors don't see much love either.

 

Make everyone on my team on my ops list. Are there six people on my team? Or seven? How do I heal the seventh person without a name plate? I can hopefully find the seventh person and ALT+F them, but that only lasts until death.

 

Make a portion of this site UI customization and allow players to share and download eachother's UI. This would be really neat. I don't really know what most of my friends UI looks like and I don't really know if my UI is inferior to theirs. I would be glad even if I could see everyone in my guild.

 

Make gridlines preset when you inter the UI editor. I'm OCD and it's difficult to tell if those two boxes are equal heighth without dragging some other box to measuer with.

 

-These are a start. This UI was a needed step in a great direction but I hope to see it expanded upon more and the near future. Especially not everyone showing up on my Ops list. It's remarkable that it has gone this long without some Dev love.

[Majspuffen]

A lot of great suggestions. Has there ever been an MMO that has done a good standard UI for healing? As I read through the post I realize just how much that is missing. In world of warcraft I had the majority of what people are suggesting through addons. As a priest I could see on my raid frames where my prayer of mending was and the duration of renew. Similarly I should be able to keep track of my kolto probes on my agent. I'd love to have a transparent icon displayed in the middle of the health bar of the person who's got the hot, and then a digit to show how many stacks and of course the usual countdown.

 

Another thing I'd like to see is some sort of aggro indicator on my ops frames. A red border around whoever has aggro would be very useful.

 

I'd also love to have the aggro-indicator. It was great to know where to prepare a heal. Especially sorcerers and sages could benefit from this and pre-shield people who aggro things.

[eldefail]

The biggest thing I want is less clunky ops frames. Coming from WoW I've used Grid ever since I decided the semi-transparent oldschool raid frames weren't going to work for me. I recently switched back to the default UI when Blizzard vastly improved their worthless raid frames. Swtor's raid frames are alright and I like that I can customize them, but I would prefer to move the unit name onto my health bar so that I don't have so much screen real estate pointlessly taken up by transparent space that makes room for unit names and a bunch of buffs I don't give a flying crap about seeing and would disable if I knew how/could.

 

As a new player who's only healed some flashpoints and group quests there really isn't a whole lot I would change. In fact i would hate to see a complete client-side change to the Ops frames, I just want more options to tailor it to my personal tastes. I would also love a buff/debuff filter in the Preferences menu so I can show only debuffs I can cleanse on ops frames and perhaps only buffs that I cast.

 

I find the current ops frames a little distracting and too busy with the names above the health bar and visible buffs. It's slightly distracting, but probably not anything I can't just get used to.

 

I would also like mouseover healing. I know a lot of people are having huge fits over this as if I'm asking for some way to cheat the game. Click, press heal hotkey, click, press heal hotkey, click, press heal hotkey. Mouseover lets me just eliminate the unnecessary click, it feels awkward and clunky without mouseover functionality.

 

So my list is, in order of preference:

1.) Buff/debuff filter in options

2.) Further ops frame customization. Resizing the health bar is a great start, but I would love more overall UI customization in general.

3.) Mouseover healing. Not necessary. Any half decent healer can do without it, but it feels a little awkward and clunky.

[Azkit]

• Ability to re-size buff / debuff icons. I currently need to choose between large health bars (by increasing health height and width) or large buff and debuff icons (by increasing the frame scale), however, because buff and debuff icons are based upon the frame scale and not given an adjustable size slider, trying to get large health bars and large icons takes up far too much space. Buff and debuff icons need to have an adjustable size.
  
• Make it easier to identify your own DoTs / HoTs as opposed to someone else's in the raid. It's really annoying trying to identify if your HoT is about to expire or someone else's of the same class. A larger icon size is all that is needed, though some people prefer not seeing icons that they didn't apply altogether. Both options should be possible.
  
• Color the borders around debuffs to indicate what type of debuff it is. For example, white: undispellable, red: physical, light blue: mental, yellow: tech, purple: force. There are some debuffs that share the exact same icon, yet one is undispellable and the other is a physical debuff. Every time I see this icon I want to scream as there is a 50% chance that I'll waste a global cooldown trying to dispel it.
  
• Remove stance, class buff, and stim icons from raid frames. There are 6 buff icons active at all times that I could care less about on 16 frames; that's 90+ icons that are taking up space for no apparent reason. It makes it difficult to see buffs/debuffs that you actually care about.
  
• Similar to above, remove the battle rez debuff and debuffs that last longer than an hour from the raid frames. Is there any reason why battle rez needs a debuff at all? Why can't it simply put the ability on cooldown for everyone in the raid? It has the exact same effect, no debuffs taking up space required. "Debuffs that last longer than an hour" is mainly referring to the 5-day debuff everyone in the raid obtains after killing Nightmare Pilgrim, the level 50 world boss on Voss.
  
• Give us the ability to customize where debuffs and buffs display. Currently, debuff icons display right on top of the buff icons within raid frames. I can't always identify if I'm looking at a debuff or a buff at a glance and it's rather confusing. I'd much rather have the ability to choose where buffs display and where debuffs display, independently of one another.
  
• Give us the ability to disable the display of player, focus target, target, and target of target portraits. I really don't need a picture of my character staring at me all the time. I'd much prefer to have a larger health bar than a smaller health bar with a portrait attached.
  
• Allow the health bar of the player, target, target's target, and focus target, and party frames to have adjustable height and width. Raid frame health bars are adjustable, I don't understand why these other frames cannot be adjusted.
  
• Give us the ability to disable the display of resource bars. I have no use seeing how much rage every Warrior has in the raid. Resource bars make raid frames needlessly larger than they need to be.
  
• Give us the ability to customize health bar text between current health, health deficient, and health percentage. Different players have different preferences. I'd much rather see health deficient, but I know others would prefer a percentage.
  
• Allow raid member names and buff / debuff icons to display directly on the health bar instead of above them. Currently, the way I have raid frames setup, it is currently taking up a lot of vertical space, to the point that I sometimes can't see my character's feet (and thus threatening AoE near my character), depending upon camera angle. I'd like as much needless vertical space to be removed as possible and there is no reason why raid member's names need to take vertical space.
  

Edited April 29, 2012 by Azkit