WoWUI Discord
This information comes through the WoWUI Dev discord. This information is not intended to be complete, but a preview of what is coming.
A lot of this is very technical and designed for AddOn authors. We've summarized some of the important parts above each section.
Coming in Alpha 6 (ETA 11/5)
There are some major changes in the next Alpha build (temporarily scheduled for today). Some of the biggest changes are:
Access to creature information is completely blocked in an instance.
Context: Players were dropping combat in dungeons to color nameplates, and adjust settings based on enemies, to make things easier once you did get in combat.
Addons can now track Max Health and Power
Addons can now track more information about your own and your pet spell casts
This also allows access to a cooldown tracker -- but it will not be able to take into account any Cooldown Reduction effects
Unit identity access
Access to creature unit names, GUIDs, and IDs are secret while in an instance (and are no longer affected by combat state).
Unit power
UnitHealthMax and UnitPowerMax no longer return secrets for player units.
Spell casts
We have relaxed restrictions around spellcast APIs so the player's own spellcasts will no longer be secret (even in combat). Units controlled by the player (including pets) are also included.
Miscellaneous changes
Equality comparing two possibly-secret values of different types will no longer error and will produce a non-secret false.
Equality comparing two possibly-secret nil values will no longer error and will produce a non-secret true.
<if x then> can now effectively be used as an equivalent to <if type(x) ~= "nil"> for secret values.
Converting secret Lua strings to numbers is no longer permitted via the tonumber API or any C API that would otherwise accept a number.
String formatting
AbbreviateNumbers and AbbreviateLargeNumbers have been moved to C++ and are now callable with secrets by tainted code (returned strings inherit secret state).
Auras
The vectors returned by GetUnitAuras and the UNIT_AURA event are no longer secret (but their contents are).
AuraInstanceIDs are no longer secret.
Coming Soon
Things that are coming soon are summarized below:
Addons that are not updated to a 12.0 build will not be able to run, no exceptions
Addons will be able to track secondary resources (but not primary). This should include Combo Points, Runic Power, Stagger, etc.
Secrets in Saved Variables
Saved variables will no longer be allowed to contain secrets.
Forced interface matching for 12.0.0
Mainline addons that don't have an interface version of 120000 or higher will not be allowed to load in 12.0.0 builds at all (with no player override).
Smooth status bars
We will be adding native support for status bars to smoothly transition between values.
Timer status bars
We will be adding support for timer status bars that automatically update on their own based on the current time.
Secret color text
We will be adding a way to wrap text in secret colors.
Raid target API
SetRaidTarget will be made usable via SABT.
Action buttons
We will be making various improvements to action button APIs, including (but not limited to) ActionButton_UpdateCooldown.
Unit death
We will be adding an event that gets sent down when a unit dies. The GUID payload will be secret in the same cases cooldowns & auras are secret.
Unit power
We will be relaxing restrictions around UnitPower so the player's secondary resources are no longer secret (primary resources will remain secret). This includes Stagger 🙂
Boolean secrets
We will be addressing various pain-points with Boolean secrets (by adding APIs that accept them in safe ways).
Under Consideration
These are the things that Blizzard is thinking of in the future:
The ability to make and customize Unit Frames, especially with some of the most useful features for healers -- absorbs, predicted heals, etc.
Improving aura (buff/debuff) filtering.
This seems to be addressing some of the feedback they've heard regarding healers and raid frames. While Blizzard recently announced raid frames coming, players have been asking for these features, especially for aura filtering and now Blizzard acknowledges the feedback and is looking into it.
Custom Unit Frame Pain Points
We are looking at ways to improve the ability for addons to re-create unit frames from scratch, including (but not limited to) the possibility of adding a unit health bar template that includes all of the various pieces needed by unit frame health bars (absorb bars, predicted heals, etc).
Aura Filtering Improvements
We are looking at ways to improve aura filtering.
SecureAuraHeaderTemplate
We are looking at ways to improve SecureAuraHeaderTemplate and make it more useful for addons.
