I hate watching portrait icons to monitor debuffs on targets or my procs on me. looking at the UI buff icons for an ability rather than my character.. it's so annoying and bland too. I know at least some procs do have visual queues, but not all do. I find myself spending far too long watching my character portrait and the target's rather than the encounter or the environment just o i can mamimize my effective or having to constantly watch the target portrait to keep track of my debuffs over the other 15 classes in the ops.. when will this be improved upon BIOWARE? WHEN WHEN WHEN WHEN WHEN??? it's really annoying and help here would be highly appreciated cos i love the scenery love the boss fights love the animations but what's the point if i'm always watching my portrait?

 

Will we ever see:

• Visual effect on your character for every one of you procs.
  
• Your debuffs on target are either larger, higher opacity, or different colour or appear first or all of these than others
  
• Visual effects of other allies abilities is adjustable - able to turn down or faded out.
  
• small icons of your debuffs to appear on the targets head, or at a certain height for very large bosses.
  
• small icons of your procs to appear just above your head to help you cue abilities along with visual aid
  

?????????????????

Edited January 30, 2014 by Macetheace

Saying that, i do wish they for once add the option to turn down other people's flashy effects, esp some of the abilities taht shouldn't really have a visible effect should either be completely invisible to anyone but the player or one of those things that will get turned down with the effects slider. Admittedly somethings should be un-tuneable I can live with that but to be able to visibly tune down other's effects and have mine up would be awesome

 

Another thing also is seeing my debuffs on an enemy, they should either have my icons larger for me than another person's or at least have mine always take the first slots on the target's debuff list OR give mine a slightly different hue - or rather give the others' a different hue or have their's faded out.

 

Finally I would love to be able to see my debuff icons on the target's head, that's a beautiful way of keeping track of my debuff visually without having to watch the UI -- especially in the raid where there would be several of my classs, and the visual queue on the target again would be impossible to tell. They could also extend that to my procs.

 

have an icon over my head when my procs become available, it would be a good assitance tot eh visual queue and again keep the eyes on the encounter rather than on the UI.

I want more audible stuff for procs. Right now I use a parser that lets you select a proc and it will make ding sound when it reads the proc in the combat log. Sadly its about 1-2s delay but overall its nice to have since sometimes I miss the proc on the bar so I'll hear the ding and know its up.

 

It would be nice if something like that was in game that only the one player can hear. As much as I like the laughing procs for certain classes, I think that could get a little annoying if everyone in the wz was constantly laughing. Regardless though, having an audio queue for procs overall would be awesome.

 

Edit:

 

Or at the very least, if audio is too much, at least let us customize the UI a bit more. Make it so the proc buffs have its own window in the interface editor. That way I can move it to somwhere in front of my character so when it procs I can see it clear as day right in front of me instead of hunting through the barrage of buffs/debuffs on my icon bar.

Edited January 30, 2014 by Raansu

I wish we had an option to turn ALL buffs and debuffs off. It's hard to enjoy the game when everyone looks like they are glowing, on fire, blinking, slightly sparkling with their hands not only on fire, but steaming at the same time. It's ridiculous.

I wish we had an option to turn ALL buffs and debuffs off. It's hard to enjoy the game when everyone looks like they are glowing, on fire, blinking, slightly sparkling with their hands not only on fire, but steaming at the same time. It's ridiculous.

 

This!

 

SO MUCH THIS!

I wish we had an option to turn ALL buffs and debuffs off. It's hard to enjoy the game when everyone looks like they are glowing, on fire, blinking, slightly sparkling with their hands not only on fire, but steaming at the same time. It's ridiculous.

 

I don't mind most of the visual effects, some look pretty nice in my opinion, but the Dark Ward animation annoys me, so yeah, I wish for that, too.

Some classes have a laugh associated with procs (assault trooper HIB procs, upper hand for smugglers), which is good (though I saw people complaining about that and wanting it removed). Wouldn't mind more audio clues since the UI is pretty atrocious in terms of what it'll let us do to alter the appearance of buffs/debuffs.

I don't mind most of the visual effects, some look pretty nice in my opinion, but the Dark Ward animation annoys me, so yeah, I wish for that, too.

 

Am I the only person that liked the new animation to dark ward? Seems everyone I talk to hates it.

Am I the only person that liked the new animation to dark ward? Seems everyone I talk to hates it.

 

I like it. It works very well in fact and brings me to my point regarding this discussion.

 

Maybe I'm lucky, but for the most part I don't have to watch my buffs anymore. I get a visual and audible cue on my toon when they are up, but also... I've come to know when I can expect a proc to hit so I'm looking for it. I don't have to see on my buff table.

 

There are only 2 exceptions, Hand of Justice and Particle Acceleration. But both of those bring another ability off of cool down so I don't look at my buff bar for those procs either. I know when the abilities tied to the proc are up, the proc is in place.

 

So... in short, I don't have the issue the OP is describing. I can play well without looking at the buff bar. I don't need any additional customization to know what is going on. I disagree that the visual cues should be toned down. I don't care what is going on with other players while I am in combat relative to special effects, but I do care about mine. So... please, leave the visual cues as they are. There is no need to augment them or take them away.

 

Edit: Here is a suggestion OP, something that helps me. As I mentioned many procs bring other abilities off of cool down, so why not setup a quickbar with just those abilities? In short, I created a quickbar just so I can see these key abilites and interrupts cool down. The great thing about it is you can size and move this quick bar anywhere you want. You can also modify the transparency if that is and issue for you and the number of slots and rows as well. I don't use this quick bar for anything else other than a visual cue and it works very well. Oh and don't forget to have the cool down text enable so you can see the CD in seconds.

Edited January 30, 2014 by Rafaman

I pretty much know when my ability-based procs happen, just by watching the combat. The relic-based procs, on the other hand, are a bit less easy for me to spot, which is why I have my procs enlarged to an almost stupidly large degree.

Am I the only person that liked the new animation to dark ward? Seems everyone I talk to hates it.

 

It's a little bit better since they stealth changed it recently (at least it looks better to me). It used to be intensity-of-a-thousand-suns bright, which made it extremely obnoxious. I couldn't even tell the color of my lightsaber or my clothes because of it.

 

I absolutely agree that the buffs/debuffs need a revamp in options. Some kind of extra flash on procs coming on your bar would be great, and/or making sure every proc has some kind of visual/audio cue. Making your debuffs stand out from the rest by either size, ordering, coloring, outline, etc. would also greatly help. I'd also like an easy way to tell if you can cleanse a debuff by giving it some kind of border. A lot of debuffs use the same icon, but don't behave the same, so as a healer unless you know through experience you pretty much have to guess if you can cleanse whatever debuff that is.