Ping Cooldowns and Resources
The new /pingspell command can be combined with macros to tell the party the status of your cooldowns, while resource bars can be pinged directly, though some addons do not necessarily work perfectly with it yet. For spells, this can all be put together into a macro for ease of use, in case you want to ping the spell status every time you use it.
#showtooltip
/pingspell Spell Reflection
/use Spell Reflection
The ping will show with a green boarder when a cooldown is available, or a red border and a number when on cooldown. Like all pings, there's also a short lockout to prevent players from trying to spam too many too quickly. Sans macros, players can also ping their resources or action bar directly with the default ping command, though it will cost you a click.
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 or Cooldown Manager spells to share cooldown information, which is helpful for knowing if a major external is available. Again, this may not work with some action bar addons though.
It's very important that everyone know when a Warrior uses Bladestorm.
While pinging every time you use Bladestorm might be a bit silly, there are practical applications for this tech. Adding a ping to Spell Reflection may help players from spending extra interrupts, putting it on your kick may help players keep track of who has expended theirs, and combining it with important cooldowns like Power Infusion or may help players time others. No in-game tech will ever truly replace the flexibility of using voice chat, but used sparingly and smartly, these kinds of additions can help players communicate with those they wouldn't otherwise have comms with.
Pinging your health probably isn't particularly important, but a healer pinging to let an over eager tank know they're out of mana might be.
Click-Free Pings
For players who would prefer to streamline their pinging experience, Blizzard has also added advancements in click-free pinging.
/ping @cursor
Pings can now be built into @cursor macros for click-free pinging, similar to the Quick Ping option, which can be used in combination with other ping-types or combined with abilities, while still keeping your main bind free for dynamic use. Players can also enable pings on raid frames, so that pinging a character in the game world will also show an alert on their corresponding unit frame.
A new option allows pinged characters to also display an icon on their raid frames.
Environmental Pings
Finally, players can change their ping behavior, setting it to only ping units like other players and enemy mobs, or only ping locations in the environment. This is particularly useful on raid encounters such as L'ura, where trying to ping specific locations can be obstructed by bosses with large hitboxes, offering a lot more clarity and precision.
