Description
rCompassCastbar replaces World of Warcraft's built-in rectangular castbar with an animated circular ring that floats directly beneath your mouse cursor. Instead of looking away to a fixed bar at the bottom of your screen, the cast progress is always right where your eyes already are — at your cursor — keeping you fully aware of what's happening in the game world while your spell is casting.
How It Works
When you begin casting a spell, a compass-rose-themed circular ring appears at your cursor position and fills clockwise as the cast progresses. The ring follows your mouse in real time, so it stays glued to wherever you're aiming or clicking. When the cast finishes or is interrupted, the ring smoothly fades out. The visual design is inspired by a compass rose: a decorative circular symbol with a rotating arc and an optional animated spark point that marks the leading edge of the progress.
The addon handles all three types of spellcasting that exist in WoW Retail:
- Standard casts — a ring fills from 0% to 100% over the cast duration
- Channeled spells — the ring drains from 100% to 0%, visually distinct from normal casting
- Empowered casts (e.g., Evoker abilities) — the ring fills stage by stage, and each stage can be shown at a different brightness level so you can instantly see which empower stage you're holding at
Features
Cursor-Anchored Ring
- The castbar ring is permanently attached to your mouse cursor. As you move your mouse, the ring moves with you. You can alternatively lock the ring to a fixed screen position (e.g., center of screen) if you prefer a stationary display — this is configurable without editing any Lua file.
- Compass Rose Aesthetic
- The ring uses a multi-layered texture system: a decorative compass-rose background, a progress ring that rotates to show cast completion, and an optional animated spark that sweeps along the ring's edge. Each layer can be individually enabled or disabled. The spark texture automatically switches between a standard version and a special channel variant when you channel a spell, giving you a subtle but clear visual cue that the cast type has changed.
- Separate GCD Ring
- An optional second, smaller ring can be enabled to display your Global Cooldown (GCD). This ring appears around your cursor whenever you trigger the GCD, giving you a compact at-a-glance view of when your next ability will be ready. The GCD ring is independent from the cast ring and can be shown simultaneously.
- Spell Icon Display
- While a spell is being cast, the spell's icon appears next to the cursor ring. This icon shows the same artwork as the spellbook entry, giving you an instant reminder of what you're currently casting without having to look at your action bars. The icon's size and position (X/Y pixel offset relative to the ring) are fully adjustable. The icon automatically disappears when the cast ends and reappears as soon as a new cast starts.
- Assisted Combat Highlight Icon
- When Blizzard's built-in "Assisted Combat Highlight" system (the combat rotation suggestion feature) recommends a spell, rCompassCastbar can display that suggestion as a second icon next to your cursor — on the opposite side from the cast icon. This keeps the game's recommendation visible at your point of aim rather than buried in the action bar. The icon's size, scale, and X/Y position are all independently adjustable, and the feature can be completely disabled if you don't use Blizzard's assisted combat system.
- Class Color Support
- The progress ring can be recolored to your character's class color automatically. A Paladin will see a gold ring, a Druid will see orange, a Mage will see light blue, and so on. This setting uses WoW's native class color system, so it works with all classes and any future classes added to the game.
- Empower Stage Coloring
- For Evoker's Empowered spells, the ring brightness changes per stage. At stage 1 it is relatively dim; at the final stage it shows at full brightness. This gives you a visual ladder — you can literally see how "charged" your empowered cast is at any given moment, which helps you decide exactly when to release the ability.
- Smooth Fade In / Fade Out
- Instead of popping in and out instantly, the castbar ring fades in when a cast begins and fades out when it ends. Both durations are individually adjustable from 0 seconds (instant) up to 1 second.
What Changes Compared to the Base Game
The default WoW castbar is a horizontal rectangle that sits at a fixed location on your screen — typically below your character or in the center. Your eyes have to travel away from where you're aiming to check how far along your cast is. rCompassCastbar eliminates that eye movement entirely. The ring lives at your cursor, so checking cast progress costs zero attention. Additionally, the default castbar gives no visual indication of GCD timing, no inline spell icon near your cursor, and no integration with the assisted combat suggestion system. rCompassCastbar adds all of these to a single cohesive visual cluster right at your point of aim.