Hello.
I came back to the game after a long break and i was really excited to see the new UI changes and all of the settings changes. I was tired that i had to use addons to play wow the way i want, right now i can play with barely any addons and enjoy the game, however i found some issues with the new settings and i would love to use the moment when Blizzard do changes to UI and overal look of the game to let you guys know my thoughts. WoW is my favourite MMORPG game and I really want this game to get better. I always pay attention to the UI the most so I don’t overload my screen with 100 UI elements and keep it simple and symetric/aligned, i always wanted to play the game with classic vibe but still be able to customize it.
I went through all of the settings to customize my game and here is what i found. I hope more people will notice this post and appreciate my efforts. I would love to see some forum mod noticing my message and maybe spreading the word about the bugs. Also sorry to mods for putting in links but this post would have no meaning without examples.
(imgur links)
Edit Mode Bugs
1. Focus Frame bug
Issue:
The ‘Buffs On Top’ setting is inaccessible, you need to first check ‘Use Larger Frame’ to access the setting. However this setting is always active and the game remembers what you’ve chosen. This might be really confusing to people first time using this (including me when i got back to the game). When you switch to Buffs On Top setting and uncheck Use Larger Frame the Buffs settings will completely disappear from the window.
i.imgur .com / uv5j7Ps.png
My idea to fix:
Leave the Buffs setting always visible but make it gray and unclickable.
2. Action Bar 1 / Quest Action Bar
Issue:
This is one of the issues that annoy me the most, as a player you don’t know which buttons/binds are going to be used during questing when you’re in a vehicle.
The action bar is actually Action bar 1, no surprise right? The issue here is with how the action bar changes when you mess with ‘rows’ setting in Edit Mode.
i.imgur .com / FUoYHvs.png
Most of us bind our most used spells in the action bar 1, the binds are 1-5 etc. When you try to customize your UI and change the number of rows your UI will move the elements from left to (bottom) right. After that your main binds will show up on the bottom instead of the top.
When you rebind it so your most used binds are on the top:
i.imgur .com / VGZTlt5.png
then the bottom part of your action bar is going to be used for quests and sometimes binds you need to use in your quests are going to be really annoying and questing will be a pain:
i.imgur .com / GJa4kMW.png
This image is an example but you can imagine the quest buttons being a shift+, ctrl+, mouse buttons etc.
My idea to fix:
Let us choose if the action bar rows align to the top or the bottom to reverse the logic if need. Some if not ‘most’ of the people prefer having the first buttons in an action bar on the very top so the spells are visible while right now they move to the bottom and when people change binds they run into issues while questing and don’t know what to do and why these binds are there.
3. Raid Settings
Issue 1:
The Raid Settings tab has a wrong priority, it always goes under the raid frames, in bigger groups it makes it inaccessible, you have to move your ui to access this which is really annoying when you play with a big group and you are trying to manage 30 people in the raid.
i.imgur .com / scqRjOZ.png
i.imgur .com / oza6SEU.png
Issue 2:
You can’t move the raid settings tab, if this was a thing i wouldn’t mention the Issue 1 because the game would be offering us a work around to this glitch. I still think this should be moveable because this issue forces you to position your raid frames somewhere else.
i.imgur .com / n37ro2x.png
My idea to fix:
Change the display priority.
Make raid settings moveable in Edit Mode.
4. Mount / Armor Durability
This is something you can’t find in Edit Mode, however during gameplay it is still there which might lead to some overlapping UI elements. I’m speaking of mount icons like Yak with 2 vendors and durability icon. I think the mount icon positioning probably doesn’t bother anyone but it still would be nice to have the possibility to move it around or at least know where it shows up in game (in edit mode). The durability icon might be a problem when you start positioning your action bars and you don’t know where it is.
My idea to fix:
Show us where these icons appear in Edit Mode and possibly make it moveable to give even more customization.
UI issues and bugs
1. Snapping
Most of the time the snapping option makes no sense and it is highly not intuitive. Most of the time you can’t really tell to which element it snaps to and it is not aligned at all. You might think it is but try taking a screenshot and zooming it in some editing software, you will notice that your ui is actually a huge mess.
Exaggerated Example:
i.imgur .com / W6joYR9.png
Example of almost perfectly aligned elements zoomed in (with snapping):
i.imgur .com / d99ZDix.png
When you exit edit mode and check your UI you will notice that there are huge gaps between your bars:
i.imgur .com / E7XZT4R.png
When you try to line it up by hand to make it symetric you will no longer be able to snap it, it won’t be connected together and it will be almost impossible to line it up perfectly because the elements will already overlap and the highlight won’t give you a preview of how it looks like:
i.imgur .com /x8pgPiw.png
My idea to fix:
Add support lines that would show you to which element you can align it. The lines would appear only when you are really close to making it aligned.
It would work similiar to how it works in Adobe Illustrator and would help us a lot. Some of the UI elements that are placed on both sides of the screen (ours/enemy frame) can’t be aligned perfectly. I know there is a grid bar but as i just described it is not working perfectly.
Another thing you can add is UI arrows that would help us move the elements pixel precisely.
2. Binds display text
The font is one of the biggest parts of the Classic UI, I don’t think it needs to be changed, however when you use your mouse buttons in binds, the display text will make no sense and you won’t be able to tell what bind it is. This is fixed in many UI addons.
i.imgur .com / P5I9RP4.png
My idea to fix:
Change the display text of mouse buttons to MB1 MB2 etc. so the text fits in the frame and makes sense. This way the UI will look way cleaner and the binds will be readable.
3. PVP Frames
Players have a choice to play PVE or PVP, however PVP UI after so many years is still so minimalistic that almost 95% of the players (in my opinion) replace Blizzard UI with addons. The Trinket display is already a huge upgrade however the frames itself are still not readable and annoying to look at duing PVP action.
Also the cooldown text of the trinkets is huge and covers the whole trinket icon so you can’t see which one it is.
i.imgur .com / tcjrjWu.png
My idea to fix:
Instead of size slider give us an option to use ‘Larger Frames’. The setting should change it’s appearence so the HP bar is way bigger and cleaner. Most of us use these bars to pick targets in PVP and focus people who are low on health. By adding this setting people will still be able to use the classic look or the better one.
4. Proc Display
I’m playing frost mage and very often i run into a visual bug with my proc display:
This screen is not a screen of one of the frames of the animation. It is literally how it looks like, it is frozen and not animated. The bug occurs when i am getting a lot of procs and spam them.
i.imgur .com / 4wMh7OB.png
5. Action Bar Art
However this is not an issue i think we should be able to choose on which action bar the art shows up, this would give us even more customization. You can limit it to only one action bar art for the whole UI.
imgur .com / a / vvynjue
6. Nameplates
Issue:
After coming back to the game the nameplates weren’t displaying at all no matter what settings i messed with or turned off/on the nameplates. The issue occured on both of my character and also heard about a friend having the same issue. The only fix was resetting all settings and reloading them using some commands i found on the internet. Resetting settings did not help, It was the reset commands i had to type in the chat.
General Settings bugs
1. Press to cast
Issue 1:
I am playing Frost Mage and I was really happy to see the option at first, because for example in high layers of torghast when you have so many powers that you are a literal machine gun you could just hold the button and use 100% of your haste. However this settings also looks like something that works but not perfectly. I still find spamming buttons faster.
Issue 2:
As a frost mage the casting stops when my ice lance procs appear. This make this setting useless because the game is forcing you into doing rotation even though sometimes you don’t want to use Ice Lance.
Issue 3:
Not sure if it’s an issue however the setting doesn’t work with macros even though there is no /stopcasting. It could make sense as some of the macros people do might cause a mess with the setting, however it should be nice to use the setting fully as it already works with quest spells etc.
2. Interact Key / Fishing
Issue
The interact key while fishing works only when your camera face the bobber 100% perfectly. I can see this setting was also made to work with professions because it already works with fishing, however sometimes bobber will land more to the side and the button will do nothing.
My idea to fix:
While fishing the interact button should work no matter what side the camera is facing.
3. Settings in general
Issue:
I found my graphic settings changed a few times in the background during last week. I also think the general game settings should be shared on all of the alts + you should have a choice to make a character specific settings.