What Can Overlays Do?
Warcraft Logs’ Damage Meter
A couple weeks ago, Warcraft Logs teased their own damage meter. This would allow people to see the real-time contribution of Augmentation Evoker, something that cannot be seen by in-game addons.
This Damage Meter would not be an addon in game, but could be an Overlay, something that can be placed anywhere on your screen, or another monitor and uses real time Advanced Combat Log tracking.
Overcoming Private Auras
Almost a week ago, this reddit thread by u/Urcra was made that showed an initial proof of concept regarding the power of overlays as a word of caution.
He was able to use the Advanced Combat Log and its ability to upload in real time to bypass the Private Auras and assign the mechanic Volcanic Heart “like in the old days”, but instead of using Weakauras, just using an Out of Game Overlay.
You can see in the below video the assignments 1 and 2 for Volcanic Heart on an overlay despite the ability being protected by a Private Aura.
Players and Mechanic Radar (AVR-like)
Today, another reddit thread by u/Shamzaa was made that shows another proof of concept regarding the power of overlays: the ability for a radar to be made.
Using the Advanced Combat Log which contained coordinates of all players, he was able to make an overlay radar. This not only tracks the position of players, but can also be coded to track the position of mechanics on the same radar!
You can see his example on Kazzara below which tracks all the players in his raid and the direction of the Breath. It also tracks the positions of all the rifts because you can tell the radar to track the position of players when the debuff falls off, then draw a circle in the location.
This could obviously be extended even further on more bosses to make a Star Augur Radar or the infamous Archimonde Radar. It could also to make a Star Augur Solver which told you who you needed to meet with and possible intersection points (can’t find video).
Conclusion
Overlays can do a lot in World of Warcraft and this is a very slippery slope. With out of game overlays currently, there’s potential to do a lot of things that were previously disabled in the past including, but not limited to:
- Geographical Mechanic Support (AVR)
- Tracking Augmentation Evoker Damage
- Overcoming Private Auras (the current weakaround sucks though)
- Radar (Weakauras of Old + Possibly In-Game Map Overlays)
Out of game overlays only work because the Advanced Combat Log reports this information in real time. If the Combat Log didn’t, this would no longer be possible. If Blizzard doesn’t fix this before Patch 10.2 and the upcoming raid, expect out of game overlays to be used significantly in the Race to World First and trickle down to general raid progression (especially if Private Auras continue to be used).
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