Icons: Benison vs Benediction

[Maeka]

Not everybody has their icons in the exact same spot they've always been "Since 2.0" and not everybody has even been playing WHM "since 2.0".

I didn't reach Level 50 on my WHM until after Heavensward (I had a long hiatus during half of 2.0->3.0). I started playing again well after Heavensward, I think perhaps a couple major patches before the end and I made this dash to get "Stormblood-Ready" earlier this year, between Dec. and the release of SB.


Anyways, it was rather chaotic and abilities got moved around on the bar rather often, especially cooldowns as I kept tweaking the formula, but I kept getting NEW cooldowns, and trying to figure out how to work them in too, etc. I haven't really been able to spend a lot of time at max level to get "settled in" until my WHM dinged 70 but a month or less ago (I arrived a little later than many due to RL work and such). And of course, with SB, we got EVEN MORE COOLDOWNS, yaaay, MORE abilities I have to shuffle around and find good spots for them that I can remember where they are. That's what I need, more abilities. Sometimes I think they give us abilities for the sake of giving us abilities so that they can then prune/change them later.

So, a lot of these abilities are either new to me, or I haven't used them a lot, or they got shuffled around as I try to find the best layout or at least one I'm fully comfortable with. Using macros to hide the ability icon would be a solution.... if it displayed the cooldown remaining. But sadly, it doesn't, and that defeats the whole purpose of me glancing down at the hotbars.

I don't know why someone brought up glancing at the keyboard; I never said that. I glance down at the hotbar to see whether or not the ability is ready (or how long until it is). This normally works with everything else, but as I said... these two abilities... ugh. I suppose I could put them on opposite ends of the bar, but that's yet more shuffling of abilities to confuse me further when I go to grab one or the other and I end up clicking the wrong button or using the wrong hotkey because that's where it used to be and is no longer.

All of these problems would be solved if they would put more variety in their icons, especially for healing spells.

But when I suggest that, everybody is quick to get on the "git gud" bandwagon and then they start making personal attacks about my skill as a player (I really don't care what anybody thinks as long as I clear the content), about how the problem lies solely with me, and about how I need to completely re-work everything I'm doing, because I'm doing it "wrong" if I ever glance down at my hotbars.

If I'm not supposed to look at, or click, hotbars... then why did SE give them to us?

[Sebazy]

If I'm not supposed to look at, or click, hotbars... then why did SE give them to us?

If I'm not supposed to look at, or click, the accelerator, brake and clutch pedals in my car... then why did Ford give them to us?

[Maeka]

If I'm not supposed to look at, or click, the accelerator, brake and clutch pedals in my car... then why did Ford give them to us?

Your accelerator, brake, and clutch pedals in your car are not displayed on a device specifically built to relay information to your eyes.

[Sebazy]

It was a barely relevant joke, I hoped the wink would give it away (not to mention the horrible imagine in my head of people driving whilst looking at their feet, as a keen cyclist and motorcyclist, I can't think of much more terrifying on the road than that!) =(

Seriously tho, I genuinely do think the touch typing and keyboard references are actually rather relevant if you want to go forward and progress. Optimising your controls and then getting comfortable with them is a pretty big deal and you'll always be hamstringing yourself if you don't do this. Needing to look down at your hud for whatever reason is always going to slow you down, not to mention you're taking your eye off the ball in doing so. I legitimately appreciate how horrible it is at first as I'm having to do the same thing trying to get used to motion controls in Splatoon 2.

I definitely feel your pain with the screen resolution thing, perhaps consider using the HUD banks feature to have one HUD that places key cooldowns more central and in the way for raids, and a second casual hud that gets rid of all that? There are ways around it. You just need to experiment and persevere with it.

[Maeka]

Sorry, I didn't see the emoticon (it's on another line), lol.

And that's what I'm doing, trying to get stuff worked out... I was just noting that the process would be simpler/easier if I wasn't mistaking icons one for another, lol.

And even if I were fully comfortable with my setup that I never, ever had to look at the hotbar to locate/click abilities.... I still kinda need to know their cooldowns/when they are available?

No amount of HUD/UI configuration is going to get around that, as there are no recast timer bars or anything like that that one can do, due to the lack of UI mod support (not something I'm bemoaning; I hated the days I played WoW where I had to re-download Titan Panel and other mods every single update, not to mention how they had to design raids around 3rd party addons that made the play experience too easy so they had to balance it around assuming people had it, which made stuff like DBM mandatory to raid).

[Sebazy]

And even if I were fully comfortable with my setup that I never, ever had to look at the hotbar to locate/click abilities.... I still kinda need to know their cooldowns/when they are available?

No amount of HUD/UI configuration is going to get around that, as there are no recast timer bars or anything like that that one can do.

It's dooable without resorting to 3rd party stuff, just not as neat or clearly visible as it used to be in WoW with a few choice mods.



The block in the middle under my lilly gauge is what I'm referring too. It's a bit of a rough hack but it gives me a much more centralised area to glance at for my cooldowns without having to scan over my hud for various different icons and their tiny timers. Naturally my screen resolution makes it a lot more palatable than yours, but I've used the same layout on a regular laptop just fine as well. It wasn't pretty but it worked =(