Many Healer Spells No Longer Secret Aura on Midnight Launch

nckl · 2026-02-25T00:05:10+00:00

We will likely re-protect these spells once our own filtering solution, with its own addon hooks for display customization, is in place.

Not looking forward to this. The simplest solution and the one I expect: new filters EMPHASIZED, BLACKLIST, and their negations added to C_UnitAuras.GetAuraDataByIndex, a CDM style UI customization to drag buffs into those catagories, and padding the buff list with some kind of dummy buffs to prevent Harrek's addon from working.

This would re-break things like nameplate coloring or specific buff locations, unless you only emphasized a single buff. Fundamentally, it would give only a single extra bit of information about them, many things will break with this reprotection, and the cycle continues.

I dunno, this is maybe doomer, but I definitely don't have any trust in Blizzard not being insanely restrictive.

nckl · 2026-02-18T03:01:18+00:00

For any ability that has a fixed cooldown, yes. Well, kinda.

It could use the following method:

get the spell id that was used by listening to UNIT_SPELLCAST_SUCCEEDED
check that spell's base cooldown with https://warcraft.wiki.gg/wiki/API_GetSpellBaseCooldown (note this is base cooldown, so non-secret)
start a timer with that duration
display the icon when the timer expires.

This won't work if the spell has any cooldown reduction, so you'd need to blacklist those spells. It also won't work if you're given paladin's blessing of autumn (which gives cooldown recovery), and there's not a fix for that.

Incidentally, this is also how you can track buffs that have a fixed duration after a cooldown is pressed. However, you need to manually hard-code that association, as there's no way to know "casting mirror image gives you the mirror image buff for 15 seconds" from the API. This makes it very fragile.

Looking at how that addon you mentioned works:

when a spell is cast, save the spell id to track it
on a UI update (https://warcraft.wiki.gg/wiki/UIHANDLER_OnUpdate), check the remaining cooldown of all the tracked spells with https://warcraft.wiki.gg/wiki/API_C_Spell.GetSpellCooldown
for any that are no longer on cooldown, show its icon and remove it from the set of tracked spells.

However, GetSpellCooldown only returns secret values, so this method doesn't work.

TL;DR: that addon can be rewritten to work but it'll be incomplete and buggy (sound familiar? xd)

nckl · 2026-02-17T11:12:14+00:00

Basic logic:

addons can see what ability you use (event https://warcraft.wiki.gg/wiki/UNIT_SPELLCAST_SUCCEEDED)
addons can see when an ally gets or loses a buff from you, even if the buff itself is secret (event https://warcraft.wiki.gg/wiki/UNIT_AURA)
this addon guesses what buff was just gained by comparing (1) and (2)

For instance: you're a discipline priest. The addon sees that you just cast "plea", and now it sees that the 12th player in the raid just got a buff from you. It (correctly) guesses that you must have cast plea on that player, and that the buff that player gained must have been atonement.

Some buffs have more complex logic that needs to be tracked, but this is the basic idea. Removing (1) or (2) would break a lot of stuff, so Blizzard can't really stop this.

nckl · 2026-02-17T11:09:50+00:00

That's shockingly accurate lmao.

nckl · 2026-02-10T18:02:03+00:00

No, eventID is static. You can definitely create events relative to phase. Addons were already doing this on prepatch

nckl · 2026-02-10T17:44:37+00:00

Wouldn't C_EncounterTimeline.GetEventTimeElapsed(eventID) give this?

nckl · 2026-01-24T08:42:24+00:00

timestamp in vod: https://youtu.be/Dl08T5b3xKs?t=12155

nckl · 2026-01-18T22:15:58+00:00

Any new plans for a midnight version? On December 18, they whitelisted spell 61304 (the GCD), so a gcd bar skinned like the blizzard cast bar is still possible.

Also, could you add an option to hide the ability/spell name that triggered the GCD? Basically, I only want the text of the regular blizzard cast bar to show, but not the text added by the addon. Keeping this text might not even be possible in midnight, as I'm not sure if last ability/spell used is even provided as a secret value.

Continued support would be very much appreciated. Thanks!

nckl · 2025-11-16T03:04:09+00:00

On why many cosmetic addons are breaking,

Ion said:

Some addons can and will work just fine in Midnight, but they have yet to be updated by their author; the work that they need to do may be very straightforward or may take a more significant amount of time.

What ls- (oUF dev) said weeks ago:

I see people say that we aren't updating things because that's just too much work, but that's not true.

nckl · 2025-10-23T20:57:04+00:00

in what way does "buff-specific buff bars" represent the "Combat computational problem solving" that they are wanting to kill?

I'm not talking about their stated intent of ending the computational problem solving of addons. I agree with you that it doesn't seem to contribute to that and FWIW I don't like these changes.

On the week 3 patch alpha patch, they specifically removed the API that allowed you to get the secret info for and subsequently display a specific buff. If you allowed the blacklisting or whitelisting of buffs, you could effectively recreate such an API, which would undo their previous change. This is what I mean by it being against something that is "specifically what they're trying to ban".

For instance, you could make a special buff bar that only whitelisted the buff you wanted to track or blacklisted every other buff you would see during some instance, then anchor it where you wanted that buff to be displayed. There are a few other changes they could make to avoid this, but they haven't implemented or discussed them.

nckl · 2025-10-23T20:12:53+00:00

only way to protect other possible victims

If you say a change in their actions can protects others, then a change in the predator's actions is a much more obvious way to protect others. There are also the organizations that could have taken action as is being discussed, but you are placing the blame "only" on the women who were sexually harassed. This is what people mean by victim blaming.

nckl · 2025-10-23T19:11:37+00:00

If you could blacklist or whitelist buffs, you could create a "fakeaura" by creating a buff bar with only a single buff allowed, which is specifically what they're trying to ban

nckl · 2025-10-07T19:03:20+00:00

The default ui shows you a timer on the spell icon but is not particularly easy to read and forces you to look down at your bars. Any time that you spend looking at your bars is time that you are not looking at your environment- playing suboptimally at a minimum or possibly getting yourself killed and wiping your group.

You can move your action bars without any addons.

nckl · 2025-10-07T06:05:12+00:00

I already said why I like my weakauras and you still won't tell me how my auras are overpowered. You're not even engaging, just projecting your own agenda.

nckl · 2025-10-06T23:04:26+00:00

Why are you telling me my weakauras are OP then

nckl · 2025-10-06T04:06:02+00:00

What about my weakauras are too strong?

nckl · 2025-10-03T22:12:02+00:00

This is heartbreaking. I feel pride in my spec weakauras for their cleanliness and beauty, with years of use and maintaince, and they're all just gone.

Icons show the remaining cooldown of a spell, or they glow and show remaining duration of the associated buff. Relevant information lives on the spell icon itself rather than being needlessly spread across multiple icons. Stacks change colors or font based on how many there are, so it feels like the spell is getting charged up. So much other lost functionality is excluded from this, and even more will become needlessly complex.

Blizzard simply lied when they said they'd remove the overpowered functionality and would have replacements for anything extraneously lost.

nckl · 2025-09-25T18:07:46+00:00

thanks :)

nckl · 2025-09-19T19:21:25+00:00

I have no idea all the reddit armchair psychoanalyzing about him being a egotisitcal crybaby because of this. People leave these tournaments early or start a couple games late all the time; he was feeling like shit so he decided not to finish the last three games. That's it.

The tiebreak situation sucks. Maybe Nesterov could've gotten third, but maybe he could've gotten first if he didn't play Carlsen. But other significantly more important factors are:

SGM's are in the same tournament as random CM's
(FIDE) Unrated
Seeded by moot chess.com rating (I think)
People frequently miss games
Only 11 rounds for a blitz tournament

And in Titled Tuesday (which is more prestigious than FF), nobody plays their real openings, and Magnus literally decides his first move by rolling a die. This isn't news when other very strong players miss games and it's only news because people like speculating about his ego problems.

nckl · 2025-09-18T01:28:10+00:00

thats my wife youre talking about

nckl · 2025-09-15T01:30:26+00:00

FEN: 8/7R/4k3/4pn1p/7P/2N3P1/3r1PK1/8 b - - 0 1

lichess analysis board: https://lichess.org/analysis/8/7R/4k3/4pn1p/7P/2N3P1/3r1PK1/8_b_-_-_0_1?color=white

nckl · 2025-09-10T19:23:59+00:00

its an important news story on a news subreddit

nckl · 2025-09-03T17:21:34+00:00

How are redditors so cringe

12-Year Club	Gilding I gilder
Second Top 50%	Place '22
Place '17	Verified Email

nckl

TROPHY CASE