Party Castbars

[Punix]

Hey community,

can we talk about castbars for your party?! I find them very essential in my 5 man team setup, to see from one screen what is going on with my team.
I know you can create a WA -> but the simple WA does not work correctly if spell is not highest rank (e.g. rank1 fireball much faster than what castbar shows), interrupts also not tracked correctly (can probably be configured within the WA)

Then there is ElvUI, where you can add deleted lines in the code to get back the castbars for your party -> no options to move them around -> basically useless for me

Are there any better/more viable options out there atm? That let me show real castbars (correct spell length, interrupts etc.) for my party and move them around freely.

[nodoze]

If you have real actual castbars on any of the background clients you can display them anywhere you want on your main foreground client via ISboxer's VFX functions.

I do that for many things including Sweeping Strikes (SS) on my background Warriors so I can see exactly what stance they are in, when SS is actually off cooldown, and whether they have the rage available to actually pop them...

If you do that I would also setup a hot key to quickly turn on/off VFX displays as I often toggle them on/off when doing maintenance on the given client.

[Punix]

yes your right nodoze! good remark, thanks! I forgot to mention that of course I could display the actual castbars via VFX.
I did not scramble too much with VFX at the moment, but should really look into it. Seems to be the best solution.

Quick question: Can I really round robin correctly with it?
So if P1 is the main window it has to VFX castbars of P2-P5
but when P4 is main windows it has to VFX P1-P3 & P5. But I guess that will work correctly, right?

[nodoze]

yes your right nodoze! good remark, thanks! I forgot to mention that of course I could display the actual castbars via VFX.
I did not scramble too much with VFX at the moment, but should really look into it. Seems to be the best solution.

Quick question: Can I really round robin correctly with it?
So if P1 is the main window it has to VFX castbars of P2-P5
but when P4 is main windows it has to VFX P1-P3 & P5. But I guess that will work correctly, right?

Yes it is very flexible and should work fine. Seeing/monitoring cast bars via VFX from any/all windows when they are in the ForeGround should be fine and you can essentially do an manual round-robin by switching windows that way... You can also setup a more automated round-robin via ISboxer to initiate it from your foreground clients but the VFXes would allows you to see how is on cool-down/etc...

From memory my setup shows VFX windows dynamically on my 3Warriors+2Paladins depending on which client is in the Foreground as follows:

• -Lead Fury Warrior (that I normally drive from): VFX VuhDo from both Healers, VFX Sweeping Strikes from both Arms Warriors, VFX minimaps from Miner, Herbalist, & Treasure Finder;
• -Arms Warrior 1 (normally follows & is Herbalist): VFX VuhDo from both Healers, VFX Sweeping Strikes from other Arms Warrior, VFX minimaps from Miner & Treasure Finder;
• -Arms Warrior 2 (normally follows & is Miner): VFX VuhDo from both Healers, VFX Sweeping Strikes from other Arms Warrior, VFX minimaps from Herbalist & Treasure Finder;
• -Healer 1 (normally follows & is Dwarf with Treasure Finding): VFX VuhDo from other Healer, VFX Sweeping Strikes from both Arms Warrior, VFX minimaps from Herbalist & Miner;
• -Healer 2 (normally follows): VFX VuhDo from other Healer, VFX Sweeping Strikes from both Arms Warrior, VFX minimaps from Herbalist, Miner, & Treasure Hunter;

I force myself to drive from each periodically for redundancy purposes and overall they work great from each client. I do that in part because sometimes I am suddenly forced to switch when my lead client goes down in PVE or PVP and I want to be able to react quickly and still be functional when that happens... I also do it because I like to switch it up and try different perspectives when grinding long sessions...

My hot key to toggle them on/off works from any client and I use that when repairing/selling/doing talents/training/etc...

Note that my sweeping strikes VFX is totally non-interactive (just a viewer) but I made the herbalism, mining, treasure-hunting, & VuhDo windows fully interactive from the ForeGround. This was a necessity for me so I could just mouse over the mining/herb/chest nodes to see what they were without going to the other client and allowed me to heal from any client.

Note that the interactivity does have a side affect for me in that if I am issuing a move command from the foreground while I leave an interactive VFX region the background client would "take off to the races"... There is likely an easy work-around to stop that via a command that issues a quick movement in all 4 directions commands and then auto-follow to all clients but I haven't set that up yet...

With the above in mind I likely will leave the mining/herb/treasure-finding fully interactive but may try to replace the dual remote Vuhdo VFX setup with a single local Vuhdo with dual repeater regions when I have time... Currently I have the VuhDo addon turned off on my Warriors but may just turn it on and have on each Warrior a single VuhDo with extra-wide bars (that don't actually do anything on my warriors except display health/mana/rage/buffs/debuffs) and then leverage repeater regions such that clicking in the Left region goes to Healer 1 and on the right to Healer 2.

[Punix]

Yes it is very flexible and should work fine. Seeing/monitoring cast bars via VFX from any/all windows when they are in the ForeGround should be fine and you can essentially do an manual round-robin by switching windows that way... You can also setup a more automated round-robin via ISboxer to initiate it from your foreground clients but the VFXes would allows you to see how is on cool-down/etc...

From memory my setup shows VFX windows dynamically on my 3Warriors+2Paladins depending on which client is in the Foreground as follows:

• -Lead Fury Warrior (that I normally drive from): VFX VuhDo from both Healers, VFX Sweeping Strikes from both Arms Warriors, VFX minimaps from Miner, Herbalist, & Treasure Finder;
• -Arms Warrior 1 (normally follows & is Herbalist): VFX VuhDo from both Healers, VFX Sweeping Strikes from other Arms Warrior, VFX minimaps from Miner & Treasure Finder;
• -Arms Warrior 2 (normally follows & is Miner): VFX VuhDo from both Healers, VFX Sweeping Strikes from other Arms Warrior, VFX minimaps from Herbalist & Treasure Finder;
• -Healer 1 (normally follows & is Dwarf with Treasure Finding): VFX VuhDo from other Healer, VFX Sweeping Strikes from both Arms Warrior, VFX minimaps from Herbalist & Miner;
• -Healer 2 (normally follows): VFX VuhDo from other Healer, VFX Sweeping Strikes from both Arms Warrior, VFX minimaps from Herbalist, Miner, & Treasure Hunter;

I force myself to drive from each periodically for redundancy purposes and overall they work great from each client. I do that in part because sometimes I am suddenly forced to switch when my lead client goes down in PVE or PVP and I want to be able to react quickly and still be functional when that happens... I also do it because I like to switch it up and try different perspectives when grinding long sessions...

My hot key to toggle them on/off works from any client and I use that when repairing/selling/doing talents/training/etc...

Note that my sweeping strikes VFX is totally non-interactive (just a viewer) but I made the herbalism, mining, treasure-hunting, & VuhDo windows fully interactive from the ForeGround. This was a necessity for me so I could just mouse over the mining/herb/chest nodes to see what they were without going to the other client and allowed me to heal from any client.

Note that the interactivity does have a side affect for me in that if I am issuing a move command from the foreground while I leave an interactive VFX region the background client would "take off to the races"... There is likely an easy work-around to stop that via a command that issues a quick movement in all 4 directions commands and then auto-follow to all clients but I haven't set that up yet...

With the above in mind I likely will leave the mining/herb/treasure-finding fully interactive but may try to replace the dual remote Vuhdo VFX setup with a single local Vuhdo with dual repeater regions when I have time... Currently I have the VuhDo addon turned off on my Warriors but may just turn it on and have on each Warrior a single VuhDo with extra-wide bars (that don't actually do anything on my warriors except display health/mana/rage/buffs/debuffs) and then leverage repeater regions such that clicking in the Left region goes to Healer 1 and on the right to Healer 2.

Thanks for the long explanation! Will look into VFX tutorials from Mirai later and then set mine up (at first it will only contain simple view function).
Just one thing: You need to setup each individual possible foreground combination yourself, right?
So that Arms WArri 1 need different minimap VFX insets than Fury Warrior etc.

[nodoze]

Thanks for the long explanation! Will look into VFX tutorials from Mirai later and then set mine up (at first it will only contain simple view function).
Just one thing: You need to setup each individual possible foreground combination yourself, right?
So that Arms WArri 1 need different minimap VFX insets than Fury Warrior etc.

If I understand your question the answer is yes but it isn't as many setups as it sounds...

I may not explain it fully properly with the correct terms but conceptually you just setup each VFX source once on each client and then you kinda "subscribe" to them on the others. Note that you determine whether each source is "view only" or interactive when you subscribe to it... You can also magnify or shrink the display when you subscribe...

What I would do, in hindsight, is setup all my sources on each of my background clients first and then go to my main Foreground client that I typically drive from and "subscribe" to each of those background sources...

Make sure you set them to be part of the auto load group (or setup a custom group if you want).

Once you have your main/lead client working the way you want and everything saved you can then either go and setup each other client individually (which is what I initially did) or you can try to leverage the auto-sync feature which will essentially copy the "subscription setups" to all the background clients (minus the ones that they are the source for). The auto-sync feature is pretty smart and works pretty well. After doing everything manually I later accidentally used it and liked the outcome and things would have likely been easier had I just done that from the beginning (in hindsight)...

Note that at one point I had to reinstall everything because I had played with the permissions on the warcraft files confusing the blizzard patcher and kinda corrupting my install... I also had to redo my location for my sources/destination when I switched to ElvUI and then again had to redo once I started getting LUA errors in ElvUI and switched back. The auto group and auto-sync features really helped speed up things...

Note that I did sometimes have issues with losing my setups and having to redo them which was a little annoying but thankfully they are pretty easy to do... I am also not exactly sure what makes the setups 100% fully persistent any my assumption so far is that there isn't any bugs and that it was me doing something incorrectly. I recommend being very diligent on making sure any source and subscription are in the "auto group" and saved and after any major change and I started logging fully out of my WoW clients and starting everything fresh to make sure things were persistent. I can now do that all pretty fast so I just do it to be safe and make sure I am not surprised later.

[Punix]

The VFX has the "huge" drawback of being somnewhat ugly as it broadcasts also the background of the other clients while they not cast anything, which makes a pretty clear terrain-disconnect on the main window in certain areas

unless ofc you make the castbar always visible with a certain colored background. but then i think i rather stay with my inaccurate WA's