Combat Timeline
On the Midnight Alpha, Blizzard has released the first version of the Combat Timeline — aka Blizzard Boss Mods. This will be what every player will have access to in Midnight once addons are disabled in end-game content.
Timeline vs Bars
Blizzard Boss Mods only allows for customization of a timeline — there is no Bars available by default. A timeline is a static single bar that has icons of the abilities travel down the length of the bar. Many players currently use bars for their boss mods with current addons, and so a Timeline would be a change that players would have to get used to.
However, it seems that Bars are still possible through addons as reskinning this information is allowed currently and BigWigs has announced that will plan to have the ability to choose bars. However, customization with BigWigs is limited to what the base UI can do.
Customization Options
These are the customization options allowed by default:
- Vertical versus horizontal timeline bar.
- The direction that the icons travel down the timeline bar.
- The size of the icons on the bar.
- The overall size of everything.
- Transparency of a black background of the timeline.
- Transparency of the entire timeline bar.
- Whether you want to see the timeline bar always, only in combat, or never.
- Show name of abilities to the left of the side (only available in vertical mode)
- Show tooltips of abilities
- Show how long is left before the ability is cast.
Missing Features
What is currently missing from this feature by default? Here’s a short list of things that people use:
- No bars by default.
- Cannot show name in horizontal mode.
- Cannot move spell name to the right side of the icon.
- Cannot remove spells that you don’t want to see.
- Cannot change the spread point where icons separate further from others (set to 5 seconds)
Addons
Addons can reskin the timeline and show the information in different ways, but they cannot do things the base boss mod cannot do as well.
This means you cannot:
- Make custom alerts.
- Cannot rename abilities to include numbers or what you’re supposed to do.
- Cannot remove spells that you don’t want to see.
- You currently cannot do sound alerts, but Blizzard has said that you can.
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