New Ping Features
As mentioned in the WoWCast, pings are getting an update in Patch 12.1, allowing you to:
Ping your health bar to share your current health percentage to the group. Sadly it doesn't seem to shout "I need healing!"
Ping your resource bar to share your amount of current mana, energy, rage or other resource levels, so that overzealous tank knows its time to stop and drink.
Ping your own action bars to share cooldown information, which is helpful for knowing if a major external is available.
This is a great start, but there is more!
Cooldown Information
When you ping your own spell or item, it makes a unique noise, puts the icon of your spell or item over your head and leaves a chat message.
is ready!
will be ready in
This is also a datamined third option, but we're not sure how to trigger it.
Can't cast %s!
If you want to indicate when your big cooldowns are up, you can easily print "Power Infusion is ready!" now in chat. This can be really useful for no voice groups, as knowing when cooldowns are up can be very useful.
New Macro Commands
Two new macro commands have been added in this Patch as well which makes it easier to ping items or cooldowns directly without needing to use your mouse. If you wanted to constantly communicate your Ironbark to a Tank in Mythic+, you can macro it directly with new datamined macros.
/pingspell
/pingitem
This seems like it will work with both spells and items which is a huge communication improvement for groups not in voice.
Raid Frame Pings
You can now also show raid frames can show pings on raid frames as well! This could be really useful for mechanics, and could function as a pseudo raid frame glow. If you're able to get a dangerous mechanic, or don't have a personal when targeted by a deadly ability, you can ping yourself and healers will be able to find you much quickly.
The system supports the different ping types as well!
This is a great quality of life feature for people who want to use it, and it can be used for any number of things.
Change Ping Targets
Have you ever wanted to ping somewhere in the boss arena, but end up accidently pinging the boss instead due to a massive model? A new feature looks to have been implemented to solve this. Players can change their Ping Targets to make them ignore units (including friendlies and enemies), only hit units, or remain the same and targeting both.
Pings will only hit environmental objects or locations in the world, ignoring all units.
Pings will only hit units in the world, ignoring all environmental objects or locations.
Pings will hit both Environmental and Units in the world.
This means that if you want to only target the ground and frequently end up pinging a Warlock imp, the Hunter, or the big boss model, you can completely ping through them! There's also a new keybind that players can set in order to toggle between these states.
Set a keybind to toggle between "Show All" and "Environment" states in Options > Keybindings > Ping System.
This is a massive quality of life feature for players, as pings will be able to be more customizable and more accurate.
