To get the most out of the DarqUI threat/detrimental window, please take a few minutes to read through all of the instructions.
Contents:
Hate Indicator, Self Health and Power Bars, Target Health Bar and Percentage, Threat Bar, Options Panel, Detrimental Icons/Cure Buttons, Self Threat Value, Target's Target Name and Health
Audible Detrimental Alerts, Chat Channel Alerts, Channel Command, Channel Test, Target's Target Health Bar, Cancel Spellcast
AggroNameHealth, CancelSpellcast, ChannelCmd, Audxxx.An, Audxxx.Value, Sound Choices
The DarqUI Threat/Detrimental Window is a replacement for the EverQuest II default threat window. It includes a graphical progress-bar style threat display in addition to the numerical displays from the default window. There are some extra features designed primarily from a raid fighter's perspective, although all classes and playstyles will benefit from the features.
Using this window, you can monitor and respond to relative primary and secondary threat values during combat, self health and power levels, enemy health level, health of target's target, as well as detrimental effects (trauma, noxious, etc.) placed on you during battle. When you are impaired, the detrimental icons can be clicked to activate an appropriate cure potion. Other features include audible and chat channel alerts when selected impairments occur, and an assist bar for the current target's target.
1. Hate Indicator This duplicates the function of the icon in the player window. When you or a member of your party is hated by a hostile NPC, this icon appears.
2. Self Health and Power Bars
3. Target Health Bar and Percentage
4. Threat Bar Aggro and Secondary Threat values are overlaid giving you a graphical view of relative hate between the tank (red bar) and the next highest threat character (yellow bar). If you are tanking, your current enemy's name is displayed and the bar shows the second-highest character's hate overlaid onto the red bar. The large number on the right corresponds to this secondary threat value.
When you are in control of aggro, the area below the threat bar will be empty, since your current target hates you the most. If the threat bar is mostly yellow, then someone else in the party is nearing the point of overtaking you and gaining enemy aggro. If the bar is mostly red, your relative threat is higher and there is less chance of another party member being hated more than you.
If you are not tanking, the name of your current target is displayed in the threat bar area. If that target is the tank, your own hate value relative to the tank's hate value (100%) is displayed in the middle number above the bar (see #7). The tank's health and name are displayed beneath that, and the tank's current target is at the bottom. If you are targeting the enemy directly and do not have aggro, the names are reversed: the tank's name (your target's target) is displayed at the bottom and the enemy's name appears on the threat bar.
Tip: You can quickly toggle between the tank and the current enemy by clicking the target's target area.
5. Options Panel Click to open the options panel (see below for description).
6. Detrimental Icons/Cure Buttons During battle when you receive an impairment from the enemy, the appropriate detrimental icon will appear with a number showing how many of that impairment are on you. If you set up audible alerts (see instructions elsewhere in this document), you will hear a pre-configured warning sound each time that impairment type lands.
If you equip current-tier potions (Dedicated Remedies) for the various cure types (Trauma, Arcane, Noxious and Elemental), you can click the corresponding icon to cure using the correct potion. If a detrimental gets cured or wears off and you click the button by mistake, a potion will not be consumed. It is suggested that you keep all four potion types visible on a hotbar nearby to check your quantities and to watch the potion cooldown timer.
Because there are no cure potions for Curses, the Curse icon can be clicked (when a curse has landed on you) to send a raid tell and a group announcement of "CURSED". This signal is not automatic and can be used instead of, or in addition to, the automatic cure announcements (see the Auto-announcement instructions elsewhere in this help file.)
Important: You must carry the Dedicated Remedy potions in your character's inventory only, and not inside your bank, house vault, or broker sales containers otherwise you will get an erroneous message that states the correct potion is not available.
7. Self Threat Value When you are tanking, this value will be 100 and will correspond to the solid red threat bar below the number. If you have other members in your party, another number will appear to the right, which is the secondary threat value. The secondary threat value corresponds to the yellow bar overlaid onto your bar. The difference between the two bars tells how close another party member is to overtaking the enemy's attention (see also #4 above).
8. Target's Target Name and Health If your current target has a target, that name will be displayed in the area at the bottom of the threat window. You can alternate your focus between the tank and his target by clicking this bar. Optionally, you can configure the Target's Target area to display a health bar for the player or NPC.
Tip: The Threat/Detrimental Window can be stretched horizontally if you prefer wider health, mana and threat bars.
There are two detrimental effect signal types: Audible and Text. Both types are optional and can be activated/deactivated on the fly so you can use one, both, or neither.
To access the options panel, move your cursor into the upper right-hand corner of the threat window and click the gold button. You need to keep the cursor inside the options panel while configuring options, otherwise the panel will disappear. This is a safety feature which puts you back into play in an emergency by simply moving the cursor away from the window.
1. Audible Detrimental Alerts: During difficult battles where self-curing is critical and time-sensitive, frequently you will be busy coordinating several things on the screen at once. Applying an audible alert for detrimentals in certain encounters can give you one less spot to monitor.
On the options panel, click the detrimental icon you want an alert for, which will place a speaker icon over the detrimental. This will also play a sample of the sound selected in your defaults for that type of impairment, to make sure your volume settings are correct. Click the icon again to clear the audible monitor.
The alert sounds are considered part of the user interface, so the volume slider control can be found in Game Options under Sound >> Volume >> Interface Sound Volume. You can configure different sounds for each detrimental type (see Window Defaults section below for a list of some choices) or they can all have the same sound (recommended).
2. Chat Channel Alerts: During combat, you can increase the efficiency with which certain impairments are noticed and cured by displaying self-targeted chat text into the raid channel, or into the separate heal or cure channel used by many raid forces. If you mostly adventure with 6-man groups, you can optionally send the announcements into group chat instead. Using the second row of icons on the options panel, you can toggle automatic chat announcements on and off (book icon) individually for each of the impairment types.
During an encounter, three types of chat text will be automatically sent to the selected channel at the appropriate time:
Blarghy tells Raidheals, "Blarghy CURSE"
Blarghy tells Raidheals, Blarghy Multiple CURSE (2)"
Blarghy tells Raidheals, "Blarghy CURSE Cleared"
Notes: The first two announcement types can go to the channel during or prior to entering combat, but the last type (cleared) will only be sent while in combat. This prevents spurious chat channel messages that can occur outside the context of combat. Generally, most magical impairment types will drop once the enemy has been slain, but since you are out of combat at that point, the final clear messages will not be sent to channel unless you are still hated by another NPC.
To further reduce unnecessary chat entries, no chat text is entered when a multiple detrimental count is reduced to 1 without being cured yet, for example when the Trauma count drops from 2 to 1. Reduced detrimental counts above 1 are more rare and will be displayed.
3. Channel Command: The default channel command for auto-announcements is raidsay, although some raid forces may prefer to filter heals and cures into separate channels for priest communications, reducing spam to the rest of the raid. You may decide to preconfigure a custom default chat channel to filter your announcements (see the Window Defaults section of this help file for instructions.) You will need to /join whatever channel you select for the announcements.
Some examples of valid ChannelCmd values are:
If you need to redirect the output channel while in-game, you can do so from the options panel. Carefully edit the channel text directly in the text box, using only valid chat names. Do not experiment with other types of commands here or you may crash your game session. Do not use the leading forward-slash "/" when entering the channel command. You must press the OK button ("thumbs-up" icon) to make the new channel command stick. Once you do this, the OK button changes to the Test button (see #4).
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IMPORTANT: Multiple raiders using all of the chat announcement functions during a raid will result in undesirable levels of extraneous spam into raid or healer channels. A scenario like this is not the intended purpose of the announcements. Under normal circumstances, the most efficient use of the mechanism is for all raiders to supply Curse announcements only, with tanks and certain other roles supplying other individual impairment announcements only on specific difficult encounters when requested by the healers.
It is strongly recommended that you set your defaults to deploy only the Curse announcement until the priests or your raid leader ask you to supply additional ones. Otherwise you may get yourself ignored due to the excess chat entries, and nobody likes to be ignored by the priests during a raid. You can set the personal audible detrimental settings in whatever way works best for you, since the sound triggers only occur on your own system. |
4. Channel Test: Once you have set the new channel command by clicking the OK button ("thumbs-up" icon), you can test the channel by clicking the Test button next to the text. This will broadcast a list of the announcement types you have selected as a test string. If you need to make another adjustment to the channel command, bring the text box back up by reopening the options panel using the gold button on the main window.
5. Target's Target (TT) Health Bar: This will toggle the visibility of a health bar behind your current target's target name at the bottom of the threat window. See item 8 in the previous section for a description of the Target's Target area.
6. Cancel Spellcast (CSC): Checking this box will cause any ability or spell currently casting to be interrupted just prior to using a cure potion via the cure buttons. Note that cure potions are also affected by this setting, so if you tend to spam-click cure potions, you will want to leave CSC unchecked.
Most of the settings from the options panel can be set as defaults to match your preferences. Original default values are shown below. Open the threat window XML file inside your custom UI folder using Notepad, and be sure to turn off Word Wrap. Make the desired changes and save the file. Change only the blue values.
<Page Name="Switches" Visible="false">
<Data Name="Hated" Value="0" />
<Data Name="CancelSpellcast" Value="false" />
<Data Name="AggroNameHealth" Value="true" />
<Data Name="AudTra" An="false" Value="false" Sound="skill_up" />
<Data Name="AudArc" An="false" Value="false" Sound="skill_up" />
<Data Name="AudNox" An="false" Value="false" Sound="skill_up" />
<Data Name="AudEle" An="false" Value="false" Sound="skill_up" />
<Data Name="AudCur" An="true" Value="false" Sound="skill_up" />
<Data Name="DetAnnounce" Value="false" Type=" " Text=" " ChannelCmd="raidsay" />
</Page>
AggroNameHealth: toggles the healthbar behind the target's target name display.
CancelSpellcast: interrupts spells and combat arts in order to cast the cure potion immediately. If you are in the middle of casting a cure potion with CSC turned on, you will also cancel the casting of that potion.
ChannelCmd: text chat channel string for detrimental announcements. Can be a single term (e.g. "raidsay" or "gsay" or "2") or complex (e.g. "tellchannel raidheals"). Do not use the "/" leading forward slash. If you are going to leave this field blank, be sure to leave a single space character between the quotation marks. A better choice for disabling the auto-announce function would be to set all five "An=" values to false so they can still be toggled on from within the game if you decide you want to use them later.
Detrimental types are the last three letters of the Data Name (e.g. AudTra=Trauma)
Sound choices: This list is not exhaustive, although caution is suggested if you select UI sounds for familiar events that could be confusing during encounters, like the friend logon sound for example. You can set a different sound for each of the impairment types if you like, although using the same sound for all of them (default) is recommended.
broadcast (synthetic chime used for game-wide system messages)
coin_cha_ching (coin movement)
ding (experience level up)
encounter_broken (three dramatic chords, the sound when you /yell)
inventory_attune (bon-n-ng!)
quest_item (quest update "plink") (also the default in the DarqUI raid and group windows for raidwide/groupwide signals)
skill_up (default) (deep gong)
spell_gained (synthetic blip)
ui_chestdrop (that satisfying wooden "ka-thunng!")
ui_friend_logon (synthetic whistle note)
ui_guild_lvl_up (zzzap!)
ui_spirit_lvl_up (harp arpeggio)