WowAce

I've always admired the core strengths of Decursive, the ease of use for novice users, how it provides all they need "out of the box", yet for more experienced users it provides the options for them to organise a lot of information in such a way that it can be taken in at glance and without taking up a lot of screen space. It definitely is much quicker to perform Curing with Decursive than it is with any of the many Raid/Party Frame Replacement tools I have used. The unique thing that sets Decursive apart from other Raid Frame tools is that it shows us you don't need to have a big unit frame displaying user names etc. in order to efficiently and effectively cure then. Instead it lets us set cure priorities so we can group the units in a logical manner and provides click to cure functionality that saves a lot of key binding. Unfortunately at the moment it isn't possible to use Decursive without having to also use some other kind of Raid Frame for many other tasks, I am hoping that one day that may change.

I believe the changes being made for my current ticket and the requirements needing to be met by the rest of the currently accepted tickets along with your Todo list will enable Decursive to be used to do even more than it does today.

I feel that with some additional slight modifications along the lines of those you have already planned or at least have said you might be willing to make Decursive could be become a complete Raid Frame replacement addon. In order for that to happen your probably going to have allow users more freedom to make changes than you currently do. That doesn't mean that Decursive can't still do what it does today so well, it especially doesn't mean that it can't keep it's current "out of the box" automatic configuration nor I hope, does it necessarily mean support has to get much more complicated for you. In fact since it would open up Decursive to a wider audience I would think it is more likely that the user community will actively aid in the provision of support especially if there was a single forum nominated as the main support forum.

I'm hoping the current idea of an  affliction types could to be extended, hopefully at some stage you might be able to add some more new "affliction types" to the core "out of the box" package but I'd like to suggest that a frame work be created to let users add affliction types themselves.

At the simpler end of the spectrum an "affliction type" could consist of a list of debuffs that users could compile and maintain. It could also consist of Various Health or Threat levels.

At the more complex end of the spectrum an Affliction Type could be a set of rules made of a Debuffs, Health or Threat Events, with each Rule or Combination of Rules having a color and/or bind(s) associated with it.

To give some examples to clarify what I'm talking about.

The simplest idea of an Affliction type would be a list of specific Debuffs , Buffs, Aura's etc.). I've given an example in Ticket #48 Comment #3. In addition to this subsets of debuff types could be used to create an affliction type which could have one or more Binds associated with it, example, Slows, Snares, Roots, Stuns, Dazes etc. I know that this information is available through the API as I currently use Power Aura's Classic to tell me if my Targets or Raid/Party members have specific debuff types on them, I can research more on it if you give the go ahead.

Health/Threat Information could also be used as an Affliction type via a number of methods. The first method would be to have 10 Afflictions each one having a trigger event of a certain %Heath/Threat. The highest priority would be 100% Health/Threat, the next lowest priority would be 90% Health/Threat and so on down. The 100% Health/Threat Trigger would be a lower priority that any of the "Normal" Affliction. The Required Heath information can be obtained using a combination of boolean and numerical operations on the values obtained from the UnitHealth and UnitHealthMax functions of the API. As I mention in Ticket #47 the required Threat information can be obtained using the UnitDetailedThreatSituation and/or UnitThreatSituation functions.

I would think the preferred option here is to show only Health or Threat though if there is a strong need for both to be shown at once I don't know if that could be done within the current frame work unless the changes to account for Ticket #36 or the ToDo list "triangles" item might enable the functionality. If displaying 2 or more types of afflictions at once in a MUF is possible it would allow us to know Health along with the highest priority "Normal" Affliction> this way we can make at a glance decisions of who needs to be cured first, curing someone on very low health before curing someone on high health could mean the difference between Life and Death. It would be even better if HP/Threat information could be used to dynamically alter Units priority but I'm not sure if that is allowed let alone possible.

With healing there is often more than one "cure" but the same is true in with other afflictions too so I think it would be best if possible to uncouple of Affliction Types and Binds so that more than one bind can be used as a cure an affliction type and/or that one bind can be used to cure more than one type of affliction. At a minimum if the ability to add a spell for use on the MUF's without having to tie it into an affliction type it would allow us to do more that just cast cures using the MUF's. I know we can do that already by using macro's but each macro itself requires a bind, it would be much better if we could just use the free binds that are not used for an affliction to cast spells on party members in much the same way that we can use 2 of the binds to "target" and "focus" without having to create a macro to do that.

At the more complex end of the spectrum if custom afflictions or health is added it would also be great but of lesser importance to separate colours from afflictions so that we could create specific alerts for a combination of afflictions, this would allow even more at a glance information. It would also be great if we can 2 or more spells to a single bind so that say if the first spell is unusable for some reason the second spell is cast, even if that requires us to click multiple times. I had hoped the API function IsUsableSpell might provide an easy way to do this but it currently does not seem to be functioning as originally intended. If may be Blizzard have decided that this would allow circumvention of the TOS, but if the ability to cast a second spell in place of another were to require 2 clicks instead of one then I'm sure than that should not satisfy the One Click per action rule.

This is intended not as request for any specific improvement rather to see if you like any of these idea's and are thinking of implementing anything along these lines in future.

Sorry for this very late reply, I've been quite busy those past few weeks and your long post required thinking and a detailed reply.

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The simplest idea of an Affliction type would be a list of specific Debuffs, Buffs, Aura's etc.). I've given an example in Ticket #48 Comment #3. In addition to this subsets of debuff types could be used to create an affliction type which could have one or more Binds associated with it, example, Slows, Snares, Roots, Stuns, Dazes etc. I know that this information is available through the API as I currently use Power Aura's Classic to tell me if my Targets or Raid/Party members have specific debuff types on them, I can research more on it if you give the go ahead.

This is already part of this milestone: http://www.wowace.com/addons/decursive/milestones/custom-affliction-filters/

I'm not sure there is an API to detect Slows, Snares, Roots, Stuns, Dazes. The only way is to have a comprehensive list of those debuffs (with possibile name collisions).
The aformentioned milestone would allow users to create this kind of list themselves though.

I've already looked for APIs to detect unit mouvement imparing effects but I couldn't find any.

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[An affliction type] could also consist of Various Health or Threat levels.

It could indeed but this would require important changes in Decurisve's core and will have an impact on performances since health and threat are constantly changing.

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Health/Threat Information could also be used as an Affliction type via a number of methods. The first method would be to have 10 Afflictions each one having a trigger event of a certain %Heath/Threat. The highest priority would be 100% Health/Threat, the next lowest priority would be 90% Health/Threat and so on down. The 100% Health/Threat Trigger would be a lower priority that any of the "Normal" Affliction. The Required Heath information can be obtained using a combination of boolean and numerical operations on the values obtained from the UnitHealth and UnitHealthMax functions of the API. As I mention in Ticket #47 the required Threat information can be obtained using the UnitDetailedThreatSituation and/or UnitThreatSituation functions.

The UNIT_HEALTH and UNIT_THREAT_SITUATION_UPDATE events could be used. Now, if I implement this it will be included in the custom filter feature, users will be able to set the health/threat % they want themselves.

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I would think the preferred option here is to show only Health or Threat though if there is a strong need for both to be shown at once I don't know if that could be done within the current frame work unless the changes to account for Ticket #36 or the ToDo list "triangles" item might enable the functionality. If displaying 2 or more types of afflictions at once in a MUF is possible it would allow us to know Health along with the highest priority "Normal" Affliction> this way we can make at a glance decisions of who needs to be cured first, curing someone on very low health before curing someone on high health could mean the difference between Life and Death. It would be even better if HP/Threat information could be used to dynamically alter Units priority but I'm not sure if that is allowed let alone possible.

Decursive doesn't display units' name, it won't display precise health or threat neither. Health and threat would only be used as triggers to fire custom filters and display a specific status. (so warriors could use Intervene when a unit steels aggro for example).

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I feel that with some additional slight modifications along the lines of those you have already planned or at least have said you might be willing to make Decursive could be become a complete Raid Frame replacement addon

I'm sure you are aware of the Grid add-on. Most advanced players prefer to use Grid+Clique for this king of functionality, they spends hours configuring them but they seem extremely happy with them once they're all set up properly...
Grid + Clique can almost completely replace Decursive, they miss some important Decursive's feature though.

To become a complete replacement of such add-ons, Decursive would need to display precise health, threat, energies, incoming heals, buffs etc...
Decursive is meant for quick/simple decisions taking, the more data is displayed the more difficult it becomes to use and to maintain.

I'm willing to implement special statuses depending on threat/health but it won't be enough to make current raid display add-ons obsolete...

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With healing there is often more than one "cure" but the same is true in with other afflictions too so I think it would be best if possible to uncouple of Affliction Types and Binds so that more than one bind can be used as a cure an affliction type and/or that one bind can be used to cure more than one type of affliction. At a minimum if the ability to add a spell for use on the MUF's without having to tie it into an affliction type it would allow us to do more that just cast cures using the MUF's. I know we can do that already by using macro's but each macro itself requires a bind, it would be much better if we could just use the free binds that are not used for an affliction to cast spells on party members in much the same way that we can use 2 of the binds to "target" and "focus" without having to create a macro to do that.

Instead of uncoupling affliction and binds, I could offer users the possibility to add custom macros (instead of custom spells), in which they could use modifier conditionals.
Another or complimentary possibility would be to let users create several mouse-over macros and bind them to whatever they want...

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At the more complex end of the spectrum if custom afflictions or health is added it would also be great but of lesser importance to separate colours from afflictions so that we could create specific alerts for a combination of afflictions, this would allow even more at a glance information. It would also be great if we can 2 or more spells to a single bind so that say if the first spell is unusable for some reason the second spell is cast, even if that requires us to click multiple times. I had hoped the API function IsUsableSpell might provide an easy way to do this but it currently does not seem to be functioning as originally intended. If may be Blizzard have decided that this would allow circumvention of the TOS, but if the ability to cast a second spell in place of another were to require 2 clicks instead of one then I'm sure than that should not satisfy the One Click per action rule.

It's not possible to bind several spells to the same action, even with two clicks. Internally Decursive uses macros to cast spells with all the restrictions implied.

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This is intended not as request for any specific improvement rather to see if you like any of these idea's and are thinking of implementing anything along these lines in future.

I do like several of your ideas but some of them seem too much as I've written above. So to summarize here is what I'm willing to work on:

- Custom affliction filters/statuses depending on a list of debuffs and/or threat and/or health levels.
- Adding custom statuses indicators for the above feature (I'm not sure yet but it will probably be corners highlight of MUFs).
- Let users write custom macros instead of direct spell casting (in the new 'custom spells' section)
- Let users bind several mouse-over macros since default WoW UI currently provide no means of doing this. (not sure about the necessity of this one)

Now those changes requires A LOT of work... I'm not sure when I'll have time :/