WowAce

BeneCast is an addon for casting beneficial spells on party/raid members.

Warning! When you download a version check to see whether it's at least beta.

The End of BeneCast
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I'm afraid I'm gonna have to let this addon go. I have been raiding more and more these days and by design BeneCast is not equipped for that. As a consequence I have been using Grid / Clique to fill healing duties (even though I'm Balance atm... a real druid is always ready to pop a heal).

In fact, Grid has been so good that I no longer use partyframes at all.

Clique is not ideal however. I tried to start a GridBeneCast addon by using GridManaBars as a template to add tiny casting buttons to the side of the Grid-frames. But the further I got the more it was obvious that I was simply not good enough of an addon-programmer to make it work. Additionally the thought of all the time I'd have to spend was too much.

I'm marking this addon as no longer maintained or something. If anyone wants to pick it up, gimme a jingle on here.

This may not be the end of my addon-developing career. But it's being moved from the fridge to the freezer for now.

As for a non-Grid replacement for BeneCast: I use Healium now. It's rocking my socks off.

Versions and Wintrow and you
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Alpha-versions are not meant to be run as it's just me checking intermediate versions into the repo while I work or when I think I'll be switching pc's.

Beta's are versions that I have tested myself and that I think are lacking in one way or another and I need more testing and/or feedback from my peers and/or users.

Releases are beta's that I deem good enough for general use. It may still not be perfect (when is it ever :). Generally this is decided based on positive user-feedback or whenever I feel like it. I'll also release if it's simply "better than the previous release".

There is another type that I call 'brave ones-alphas'. I have VERY little testing time, so whenever I get around to loading it up I'd like to have gotten the obvious errors out of the way. When I call out a certain revision like that I am stating my intent to dedicate my next testing session to that version (unless it's taking too long and I start twiddling at the code again :p). Anyone brave enough to load up the addon in the mean time is then free to test and post tickets with impunity (but for god sake, mention the exact revision number when you do).

What is this BeneCast
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BeneCast is an addon for casting beneficial spells on party/raid members. This includes: buffs, cures and heals. Basically it will add buttons next to unitframes for quick and easy casting without cumbersome targetting. BeneCast comes preloaded with a list of skills that fall under this category and allows you to pick who gets which buttons next to their healthbar.

It is only meant for 5-man healing due to the complexities that accompany creating and attaching buttons to up to 40 raid-unitframes. You can still raidheal, but you'll have to target them and use the action buttons attached to the target or focus-frame. There are also better addons out there for raidhealing like Grid and Clique.

Various unit-frame addons are supported. If you find BeneCast does not detect your unit frame of choice post me a ticket and I'll try and add them.

Linkies
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See http://www.wowace.com/projects/benecast/pages/state-of-the-addon/ for a more accurate status.

See http://www.wowace.com/projects/benecast/pages/usage/ for a manual.

See http://forums.wowace.com/showthread.php?t=14847 for the Official BeneCast 10 thread.

See http://www.wowace.com/projects/benecast/pages/ideas-for-bene-cast/ for what's cooking in my brain concerning BeneCast.

History
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BeneCast was originally developed by Skurel. His 1.x version was picked up by several developers when he stopped releasing versions. As it was lacking certain features and had a minor amount of bugs I started my addon-development fixing and adding to the best version out there at the time.

A big part of the addon for me was the inclusion of healing bars for party-pets as my druid was often grouping up w a hunter.

Skurel briefly resurfaced once more to release a buggy 2.0 version (still wow classic though) and I opted to move to the "new and improved" version and fix the bugs. For several years I maintained the addon naming it BeneCast 2.1.2 Wintrow x.yy. After a while the addon was barely recognisable, Skurel had dropped off the planet and people insisted that I took more credit by leaving out the "old" version number.

This is now a complete rewrite based on the new ideas of how an addon should be developed as well as using wowace-libs to do the things I am mostly inept at.