UpRank

Scans your action bars for unintentionally downranked spells and replaces them with the highest rank available. UpRank is designed primarily for characters leveling with dual spec, as it fixes an issue with Blizzard's implementation that sometimes leaves low ranks of abilities on your bars. This issue is explained in more detail below.

By default, your bars are scanned on login and after you swap talents, but this can be disabled. In either case "/uprank scan" will start a manual scan.

Settings are saved per-character, and scanning is automatic by default for characters below the level cap (it defaults to "report only" for level 80s). See the commands below for how to change the scan automation.

Features

• Checks your action bars for low rank spells and replaces them with the highest available rank when you log in or swap specs.
• Checks for missing abilities when you swap specs and restores them (without UpRank, abilities that use a resource besides mana would completely disappear instead of staying at a low rank).
• Can be configured to ignore spells by name (all ranks or specific ranks) or to let you preview changes before applying them.
• Cleans up the spell spam when you switch talent specs.

Commands

Type /uprank or /ur, followed by any one of these commands.

scan

Manually trigger a scan and fix any downranked buttons.

report

Reports any low rank spells but does not fix them.

auto on/off

Enable/Disable automatic scanning after you switch talent specs.

auto report

Automatic scans will list any downranked spells and print a clickable link to fix them, allowing you to preview the changes.

ignore <spell name> <rank>

Ignores the specified spell and rank. Use a number for a specific rank (add them one at a time), "all" to ignore all ranks of that spell (including any you learn later), or "none" to remove all ranks that spell from the ignore list. The spell name is not case sensitive, but the spell must exist in your spellbook.

force-ignore <spell name> <rank>

Use this format to ignore spells you don't have yet. This command is case sensitive.

show-ignores

Lists the currently ignored spells.

clear-ignores

Clears the list of ignored spells.

The Problem

To fully understand the problem that UpRank is designed to solve, it's necessary to understand how the game handles your action bars when you train new ranks of spells. The system I'm about to explain has been around prior to the introduction of dual spec (it worked fine then and still does, but a design oversight was made that causes issues with dual spec).

When you train "Rank X" of a spell, the game will check your active action bars for any "Rank X-1" buttons for that spell and replace them with the new rank. It skips any ranks lower than that, however. The main purpose of this exception was to support the old downranking that's nearly obsolete now, but is still useful for a couple purposes - some abilities still receive a functional benefit to downranking (eg. Rank 1 Life Tap to proc Glyph of Life Tap), and some spells use different reagents at different ranks (eg. druids' Rebirth).

To upgrade the system to handle dual spec, Blizzard should've added one of two things: code to check and update the spells on your inactive bars as soon as you train the new rank, or code to update them when you swap specs. Apparently they made an oversight and did not include either, leading to today's dual spec issue: ranks won't update on your inactive bars, then will get skipped when training in the future because they are too low. In addition, abilities that use runic power, rage, or energy cannot be downranked, and will disappear if they were in the spec you're switching to (eg. if a druid trains a new rank of Maul while in their Resto spec, then switches to their Feral spec, any spot on the Feral bars that previously contained Maul will now be empty), causing even more confusion.

The only way to fix spells that get downranked this way is to manually look for and update them, or use an addon to do it for you.

Planned Features

• Finish converting to Ace3 (slash commands, AceDB, possibly a gui config)
• Add support for more languages

Known Issues

r46beta

• Rank detection only works for enUS, deDE, and frFR locales.
• deDE has no other localization, and frFR is incomplete.