Midnight OverviewUser Interface Hub
Healer Spells No Longer Secret Aura on Midnight Launch
Despite some recent hotfixes to healer buff sorting, the lack of raid frame customization by Blizzard has led to significant frustration amongst healers. Healers accurately assess the healing battlefield by relying on quick identification of critical buffs and debuffs; most are finding that task difficult in the current state of addon lockdown.
Our Restoration Shaman writer, Harreks, has been trying to resurrect some of the raid frame customization lost by healers since the Midnight Pre-Patch. We previously highlighted some of the workaround solutions as well as the first incarnation of his addon, but the latest version has since been patched out of the game as referenced in the response below.
Below is a recent post from Blizzard on the WoWUI Discord about their plans for buff filtering in the near future including whitelisting certain healer spells at Midnight launch until a full system that allows for players to hide or emphasize buffs directly via the Spellbook arrives in a later patch.
Hello again from Blizzard!
Today we have an update regarding which spells we are going to be flagging as non-secret for Midnight launch. These changes are planned to go out in a data hotfix in the next couple days, but we wanted to give you all a heads up beforehand so you can plan any necessary changes to your addons.
Over the course of Beta, as well as recent weeks on live, one of the biggest recurring points of feedback has been from healers who wish that our default UI provided more robust options for filtering or emphasizing specific buffs on raid frames. In the past month we have added a few layers of extra logic to buff sorting and visibility, and while we've heard positive feedback from many healers about these improvements, we realize that our solutions are leaving others still wanting more customization.
While we had originally hoped to be able to deliver a streamlined default experience, it has become clear that there are common use-cases that a single set of logic cannot cover. Some players may want to make simple tweaks like highlighting the target of their Preservation Evoker's Echo, or their Holy Paladin's active Beacon, while others would consider that to be distracting clutter. We are now beginning work on a system to allow players to hide or emphasize buffs from their spellcasts on a per-spell basis, via the Spellbook. We expect that solution to be ready for players in a later Midnight patch.
In the meantime, we have also seen a few addons popping up that use non-secret information to make very reliable guesses about players' spellcasts in order to drive this sort of filtering logic. Breaking the API calls driving this functionality would cause significant collateral damage to common addons, and we are not planning to do go down that path. Ultimately, this design space is mostly about customizing the display of information, rather than objectively advantageous computational solutions, so we want to treat it the same way we approached resources like Holy Power or Maelstrom.
Thus, rather than requiring addon developers to jump through hoops to support an implementation that will have some frustrating inaccuracies, we are planning to flag a number of short-cooldown rotational healer spells, and very long duration buffs, to exclude them from our Secret Value system. We will likely re-protect these spells once our own filtering solution, with its own addon hooks for display customization, is in place.
The full list of spells being flagged is below, broken down into several categories.
Healer Buffs and HoTs
Preservation Evoker
355941 - Dream Breath
363502 - Dream Flight
364343 - Echo
366155 - Reversion
367364 - Echo Reversion
373267 - Lifebind
376788 - Echo Dream Breath
Augmentation Evoker
360827 - Blistering Scales
395152 - Ebon Might
410089 - Prescience
410263 - Inferno's Blessing
410686 - Symbiotic Bloom
413984 - Shifting Sands
Resto Druid
774 - Rejuv
8936 - Regrowth
33763 - Lifebloom
48438 - Wild Growth
155777 - Germination
Disc Priest
17 - Power Word: Shield
194384 - Atonement
1253593 - Void Shield
Holy Priest
139 - Renew
41635 - Prayer of Mending
77489 - Echo of Light
Mistweaver Monk
115175 - Soothing Mist
119611 - Renewing Mist
124682 - Enveloping Mist
450769 - Aspect of Harmony
Restoration Shaman
974, 383648 - Earth Shield
61295 - Riptide
Holy Paladin
53563 - Beacon of Light
156322 - Eternal Flame
156910 - Beacon of Faith
1244893 - Beacon of the Savior
Long-term Raid Buffs
1459 - Arcane Intellect
6673 - Battle Shout
21562 - Power Word: Fortitude
369459 - Source of Magic
462854 - Skyfury
474754 – Symbiotic Relationship
Blessing of the Bronze Auras
381732 - Death Knight
381741 - Demon Hunter
381746 – Druid
381748 – Evoker
381749 – Hunter
381750 – Mage
381751 – Monk
381752 – Paladin
381753 – Priest
381754 – Rogue
381756 – Shaman
381757 – Warlock
381758 - Warrior
Long-term Self Buffs
433568 - Rite of Sanctification
433583 - Rite of Adjuration
Rogue Poisons
2823 - Deadly Poison
8679 - Wound Poison
3408 - Crippling Poison
5761 - Numbing Poison
315584 - Instant Poison
381637 - Atrophic Poison
381664 - Amplifying Poison
Shaman Imbuements
319773 – Windfury Weapon
319778 – Flametongue Weapon
382021, 382022 – Earthliving Weapon
457496, 457481 – Tidecaller's Guard
462757, 462742 – Thunderstrike Ward
Resource-like Auras
205473 - Mage Icicles
260286 - Hunter Tip of the Spear
Cooldowns
8690 - Hearthstone
20608 - Shaman Reincarnation
All Mythic Plus Teleport Spells (IDs not listed)
