A Fear Ward manager for the World of Warcraft 1.12 client (private "Turtle-style"
servers — built and tested against OctoWoW). Fear Ward (spell 6346) is an instant,
30-second-cooldown Priest buff that blocks the next fear for 10 minutes — the single
most important cooldown to keep rolling on your tanks in fights like Onyxia,
Broodlord, or any AoE-fear pull. FearWardHelper answers the four questions that
otherwise get shouted over voice comms all night:
- Whose Fear Ward is up? — a cooldown tracker listing every priest in your party/raid, green Ready or a red countdown, so you always know who can ward right now.
- Who still needs warding? — a watch-list of the players you care about (tanks, off-tanks, key targets) showing whether each currently has the buff and how much time is left.
- Ward them without losing your target — click a watched player's row (or bind a macro) to cast Fear Ward on them without dropping whatever you're currently targeting, with live range/line-of-sight feedback and a direction arrow.
- Announce what's happening — a floating notification area that calls out casts, losses (batched for AoE fears), wards running low, and cooldowns coming back up.
Cooldown and ward tracking work for any class — a raid leader who isn't a Priest can run FearWardHelper purely to watch the priests. The cast helper only lights up for a Priest who actually knows Fear Ward; everyone else sees the trackers in a read-only "observer" mode.
Status: implemented and in active use, but not yet exercised across every code path in a full raid — treat it as a beta. See CLAUDE.md's "Open TODOs" for what polish is left.
- Environment & compatibility
- Installation
- Quick start
- The tracker frame
- The watch-list & casting
- Notifications
- The config panel
- Slash commands
- Macro globals
- Tips & known limitations
- Development
- License
FearWardHelper targets the 1.12.1 client. It works standalone, but it detects a few optional client patches and addons at login and unlocks extra precision when they're present:
| Optional | What it unlocks | Without it |
|---|---|---|
| SuperWoW (client-side patch) | The core of the addon: observing every priest's Fear Ward casts (UNIT_CASTEVENT), the event-driven ward buff signal (BUFF_ADDED/BUFF_REMOVED), GUID-based unit resolution, and UnitPosition for the hover distance/arrow. |
Frames and the cast helper still work, ward presence is polled via base-API UnitBuff, and cooldowns still arrive over sync from other FearWardHelper users — but your own cooldown won't self-populate after casting, and others' wards are only seen in buff-scan range. A one-time warning prints. |
| Nampower (client-side patch) | CastSpellByName(name, unit) casts Fear Ward directly on a unit without touching your target. |
Falls back to the AutoSelfCast-off + SpellTargetUnit dance — same result, slightly more work under the hood. |
| UnitXP_SP3 (addon) | Exact range (distanceBetween) and line-of-sight (inSight) for the watch-row hover: the yards-to-close countdown, the LOS indicator, and the WardNext reachability gate. |
Falls back to a coarse CheckInteractDistance range gate (~28y) with no LOS test — the hover still shows range, just less precisely, and never flags LOS. |
Two FearWardHelper users in the same raid also sync their own casts to each other over addon messages, so a priest you can't even see still shows the right cooldown. None of the above is required, and nothing needs configuring — detection is automatic and silent.
The other local addons referenced while building FearWardHelper (idioms borrowed — distinct from the runtime detection above) are documented in CLAUDE.md's "Reference addons" section; none need to be installed to run it.
- Download or clone this repository.
- Copy the whole folder into your WoW installation's
Interface/AddOns/directory so the path readsInterface/AddOns/FearWardHelper/FearWardHelper.toc. - Launch the game and enable FearWardHelper on the AddOns screen at character select if it isn't already ticked.
A tagged release also builds a ready-to-extract FearWardHelper.zip via CI
(pack.ps1) — grab that from the repository's Releases page if you'd rather not clone.
- Get into a group with at least one Priest. FearWardHelper only shows itself while
grouped (or set
showWhenSolo) and a priest is present — no priest means no Fear Ward to track, so it stays hidden. - Open the config panel with
/fw. - Add the players you want to keep warded to the watch-list — type a name into the add box. Order them by priority with the ^/v buttons (top = most important — your main tank).
- In the raid, glance at the frame: the top section is every priest's Fear Ward cooldown, the bottom section is your watch-list and who's warded.
- If you're a Priest, left-click a watched player's row to ward them — no target
switch. Or bind
FearWardHelper_WardNext()to a key and just mash it: it always wards the highest-priority player who needs it (see WardNext).
FearWardHelper draws a single moveable panel (FearWardHelper_CD) that stacks two
lists:
- Cooldowns (top) — one row per priest in the group, showing Ready (green) or a red 30-second countdown. Names are class-coloured.
- Targets (below a divider + "Targets" sub-header) — one row per shown watched player who is present in the group, showing whether they have Fear Ward and the time left. Green = warded with plenty of time, orange = warded but under your low-duration threshold, red = not warded.
The target section only appears when at least one watched player is actually present.
Drag the frame to move it while unlocked, and resize its width from the bottom-right
grip (height is driven by the row count). /fw lock / /fw unlock toggles dragging;
scale, background opacity, and everything else is in the config panel (/fw). (See the
hero shot above for the frame in a live raid.)
Watch states: shown / hidden / off
Every watch-list entry keeps its priority slot but sits in one of three states — a linear "level of involvement":
- shown — tracked, drawn as a row, a WardNext priority, and notified about.
- hidden — still a WardNext priority and still notified, but no visible row. For a background target you want topped off but not staring at (an off-tank).
- off — kept in the list but not a tracked priority: no row, no priority slot, no notifications. For someone not tanking tonight but back next raid, so you don't remove and re-add them. Still sweep-eligible (see below) — off means "don't prioritize", not "never ward".
In the config panel each row has a tri-state button (S/H/O) that cycles
shown → hidden → off.
If you're a Priest who knows Fear Ward, the watch rows are a cast helper: click one to cast Fear Ward on that player without switching your target. (For everyone else the rows are inert — no error spam, no highlight.)
When you hover a castable row, it shows you whether you can actually reach the target:
- Out of range — the status column counts down the yards still to close (red) and a direction arrow points the way to run.
- No line of sight (
LOS) — in range but sight-blocked: showsLOSand the arrow still points the way so you can reposition. - Castable — a plain grey hover tint, no arrow.
Clicking a row that's already safely warded is refused with a chat line
("<name> already has Fear Ward (M:SS left)") rather than wasting the spell and its
30s cooldown topping off a full ward — a recast is only allowed when they're unwarded or
under your low-duration threshold.
The real workhorse is FearWardHelper_WardNext() — bind it to a key. It wards the
next player who needs one, in three priority tiers:
- Shown tracked — your visible watch-list, in order. The top present + unwarded entry is authoritative: if reachable it gets warded; if unreachable the cast is blocked (and optionally announced) rather than silently dropping to someone lower — you want to know your main tank is out of range, not quietly ward the off-tank instead.
- Hidden tracked — hidden watch entries, in priority order; the first present, unwarded, reachable one is warded. Unreachable ones are skipped (a preference, not a gate).
- Sweep (optional — the Allow Ward untracked checkbox) — anyone else present
who isn't already an enabled priority: untracked group members and
offwatch entries. Candidates are taken by class in a configurable class-priority order (see Class priority), then roster order within a class.
A ward "needs" (re)applying when the target is unwarded or under your low-duration
threshold, so WardNext tops off a soon-to-expire ward early rather than waiting for it
to drop. FearWardHelper_WardNextTracked() is the same thing but only tiers 1 & 2 —
it never sweeps, for a "top off my watch-list only" keybind.
A floating, fading message area (FearWardHelper_Notify) that announces time-sensitive
Fear Ward events. Each kind has its own on/off toggle; all share one look, stack
newest-first, and fade out after a configurable delay. The area is moveable and
anchorable like the trackers (its "size" is the font size — there's no resize grip),
and it aligns/grows from whichever corner you anchor it to.
Announced events:
- Cast — "
Fear Ward gained by <target> (<caster>)" when a ward lands. - Loss — "
Fear Ward lost by <name>", batched (with a "(+N more)" suffix) so an AoE fear that eats five wards at once is one line, not five. A ward that simply expired is reported separately ("Fear Ward expired on <name>"). - Low ward — "
Fear Ward running low on <name>" once a ward drops below your low-duration threshold. - CD ready — "
Fear Ward ready" when your own cooldown comes back, and optionally "Fear Ward ready (<priest>)" for other group priests. - Blocked cast — "
Fear Ward blocked: <name> (out of range / no line of sight)" when WardNext's top target is unreachable.
By default notifications are only raised about players actually in your raid/party; "Include untracked group members" widens casts and losses to in-group players who aren't on your watch-list.
/fw (or /fw config) opens a hand-built panel (drag the title bar to move it) —
this is where nearly everything is configured. It's a front-end over the same
internal setters, so the panel and live dragging never disagree.
It contains:
- The watch-list editor — a scrollable list (5 rows visible) with, per row, the tri-state S/H/O button, up/down reorder arrows, and an X to remove. A Class priority button beside the header opens the sweep's class-order popup (below), and an add box appends a new player.
- Checkboxes — lock frames, show when solo, Allow Ward untracked (the WardNext sweep tier), and Hide addon (the master hide toggle).
- Sliders — frame scale (0.5–2), background opacity, low-ward warning
(0–120s;
0disables), notification fade duration, and notification font size. - A Notifications block — a Test button plus a checkbox per notification kind: announce casts / losses, include untracked players, announce failed casts, CD ready / group CD ready, and low ward.
- Per-frame anchor rows — a 9-point anchor picker and X/Y offset boxes for the tracker frame and the notify frame, plus a Reset positions button.
The Class priority button opens a small popup with one row per class — a class-coloured name, an enable checkbox, and ^/v reorder arrows. This is the order WardNext's sweep tier tries classes in when it's looking for anyone to ward. Unchecking a class removes it from the sweep entirely (never swept), not just deprioritizes it. (Role/spec can't be inspected for other players on the 1.12 client, so class is the only per-unit priority the sweep can order by.)
The slash interface is intentionally minimal — everything else lives in the config
panel. /fw (or /fearward) is the prefix.
| Command | Effect |
|---|---|
/fw or /fw config |
Toggle the config panel. |
/fw lock / /fw unlock |
Lock or unlock the frames against dragging. |
For keybinds and macros:
FearWardHelper_Ward("Name")— ward a specific player (if in the group), refusing if they're already safely warded.FearWardHelper_WardNext()— ward the next player who needs it, across all three priority tiers (see WardNext).FearWardHelper_WardNextTracked()— same, but watch-list tiers only; never sweeps.
Example macro:
/script FearWardHelper_WardNext()- The addon only shows itself while grouped (or with
showWhenSoloset) and at least one priest is present, and the master Hide addon toggle is off./fw configalways works so you can un-hide. - Wards applied in combat-log range are tracked exactly, moment-to-moment. A ward applied out of sight, or already up before you arrived, falls back to a predicted/persisted timer or a bare "warded" until a scan or event sees it. Your own ward's exact remaining time is always read directly.
- Ward timers survive a
/reloador relog — they're persisted as real wall-clock expiry times, with already-expired entries pruned on load. - Without SuperWoW, tracking is reduced but not absent (see the compatibility table) — the frames still show and the cast helper still works.
Contributor-facing architecture notes, the SavedVariables data model, the two-layer cooldown/ward tracking design, the direction-arrow atlas math, 1.12 client gotchas, and comment/style conventions all live in CLAUDE.md. That file also names the other local addons referenced during development; none are required to build or run this addon.
MIT — see LICENSE.