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Crowd Control announced on your screen in patch 5.1

Crowd Control announced on your screen in patch 51

In one of my earlier PvP addon posts here at WoW Insider, I talked about a fantastic addon, which was, and still is, called LoseControl. What LoseControl did was to bring up an icon in the middle of your screen whenever you lost control of your character, that indicated precisely how you had lost control, by displaying a spell icon, and for how long. This could also be modified by OmniCC to add a duration if you preferred that to the pie-chart method of measuring time, as can be seen in the header image.

I always think that the mark of a really good addon is when Blizzard incorporates it into the game, and it looks like this is exactly what's happening with LoseControl. The Blizzard blog with the official 5.1 PTR patch notes had this to say:

Blizzard
A new banner will appear when a player is subjected to an effect that causes them to lose control of their character. The effect that caused the loss of control and remaining duration will be displayed. Configuration options are available in the "Combat" section of the "Interface Options" menu.

Additionally, new strings have been datamined that indicate that these banners will show the type of CC a player is subject to, as well as the effect itself, so, for example, Psychic Scream is a fear effect, and can be removed with Will of the Forsaken or a Tremor Totem, whereas Mortal Coil is a horror and cannot.



As someone who is a big fan of LoseControl, I heartily applaud the introduction of this new UI element by Blizzard. It removes a small layer of difficulty from PvP, and indeed from PvE, by illustrating to players just exactly what's happening to them and allowing them to respond accordingly. In response to the inevitable complaints about catering to the casuals, this doesn't tell you what to do about the CC, only what it is. The player still has to react.

Update: I was able to get onto the PTR and get you this screenshot!

Crowd Control announced on your screen in patch 51



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