Health Trail (Ascension)

Health Trail

When a unit takes damage, its health bar just... drops. You lose the one piece of information that matters most in the moment: how big was that hit? HealthTrail adds a smooth trail over the health you just removed. The real bar drops instantly, and a colored bar lingers over the lost chunk before catching up. The size of that trail is the size of the hit.

Features

• Trail on health loss — the lost chunk stays visible for a moment, then smoothly catches up to the real health value.
• Target frame and nameplates — enable either, or both.
• Two modes:
  • All damage — the trail reacts to any health loss, from any source.
  • My damage only — the trail only grows for damage you deal, including your pet and guardians. In a raid, you see your own contribution instead of everyone's.
• Fully configurable — trail length, color and opacity.
• Lightweight — no dependencies, one file, no scanning, no timers running when nothing is taking damage.

Usage

Type /healthtrail (or /htrail) to open the options, or find them under Interface → AddOns → HealthTrail.

/htrail toggle turns the trail on and off without opening anything — handy for a keybind or a macro.

Installation

Extract the HealthTrail folder into: World of Warcraft\Interface\AddOns\

You should end up with Interface\AddOns\HealthTrail\HealthTrail.toc.

Compatibility

Built for Wrath of the Lich King (3.3.5), including Ascension.

HealthTrail attaches to the health bar it finds inside the nameplate rather
than assuming a specific layout, so it isn't tied to one nameplate style. It
works with the default nameplates and has been confirmed with ElvUI,
TurboPlates and Kui Nameplates. Other nameplate addons should work too; if
one doesn't, /htdiag reports what HealthTrail sees and it's usually a small fix.

Changelog

1.1

- Now works with nameplate addons that build their health bar lazily.
  Confirmed working with TurboPlates.
- Added HealthTrail_RegisterBarResolver() so other nameplate addons can
  register their own layout.
- More reliable health bar detection on custom nameplates.

1.2

- Now works with Kui Nameplates.
- Fixed the trail sometimes being drawn on a hidden health bar. Addons that
  reskin the default nameplate usually hide the original bar instead of
  removing it, so the trail could end up on a bar nobody sees.
- Added /htdiag — reports what HealthTrail sees on your current target's nameplate. Handy if you want to report a nameplate addon that doesn't work.

1.3

- ElvUI support: the trail now works on ElvUI nameplates and the ElvUI target frame.
- More reliable trail attachment: re-binds correctly when nameplate addons recycle frames between units.