Say my health out loud
Audio alerts speak your health as it crosses steps you pick. At 20% steps you hear "forty", then "twenty". Make "forty" mean DP and "twenty" mean Bubble.
The game says the number, not the button. Pairing the two is on you.
Every danger shows you something first: a cast bar, a debuff, a mob turning towards you. This page covers which of those tells WoW still gives you in a key, who can read each one (you, the game, or an addon), and 30 ideas for turning them into "press DP now".
Blizzard's own UI reads everything. Addons get less: often just a yes/no they can use to colour or fade something but can't act on, and sometimes nothing at all. Each row says where I checked it.
| The tell | Blizzard's own UI | An addon | Checked in |
|---|---|---|---|
| Your health dropping | Yes, spokenCombat Audio Alerts says your health as it crosses the steps you set. | Picture onlyColour or fade by health, but no sound and no timing. | Blizzard's alert code; your notes on health cues |
| A debuff lands on you | YesAn aura sound Blizzard plays itself. Audio alerts can also speak the debuff's name. | Icon, label, soundBigWigs' big icons are drawn by Blizzard's own aura display, so they always show. When addons read auras directly, the game refuses about half the time. | BigWigs source; 12.1 API notes |
| A mob turns to you | Yes, spoken"Aggro" or "targeted" (audio alerts setting) | YesThreat colour on the nameplate | Blizzard's alert code; Platynator |
| Which spell a trash mob is casting | YesThe icon and name on the cast bar, and a flash on casts Blizzard marks important | NoThe spell is hidden from addons. What's left is three yes/no answers: important? can't be kicked? aimed at you? | ArcUI and Platynator source |
| Which spell a boss is casting | YesBoss Warnings and the Boss Timeline, both switched off on your account | YesThe spell is visible to addons, so TollPips can time off it | Your game settings; your TollPips notes |
| Who a mob is (the kill-first mob) | YesIts name and model | NoNames are hidden from addons in instance combat. Raid markers still show. | Your DandersFrames notes |
| DP or Bubble ready | YesCooldown Manager | Yes"On cooldown" can be read even though the timer can't | Your notes on hidden values |
| A warning from a party member's addon | – | NoAddon chat is locked in instances | BigWigs source |
| The combat log | – | NoAddons can't read it at all now | Cell source |
| The combat log file on disk | Written as you play | Outside the gameA Windows program can read it with every spell named. How fast the game writes it is the open question. | Your logs, but no timing test yet |
Grouped by the tell they use. Flip it is a setting with no code. Test it should work but needs one key to prove. Build it is code that still has to be written. Weird is what it says. A heavy border marks the ones I'd do first.
Audio alerts speak your health as it crosses steps you pick. At 20% steps you hear "forty", then "twenty". Make "forty" mean DP and "twenty" mean Bubble.
The game says the number, not the button. Pairing the two is on you.
The "say if targeted" setting has an Aggro mode. On Ret, a melee death usually means a mob got loose or turned to you. Now you'd hear it the moment it happens.
A separate alert fires when you carry a debuff you can remove yourself, and it says the type: "Poison". That covers Heartstop Poison (−30% health) and Corrosive Essence.
Reads out the names of debuffs on you, with a minimum-duration filter. Set it to about 5 s and you'd hear the bleeds and Living Bomb but not the short ticks.
Could get noisy. Try it for one key.
For Holy nights. It speaks a party member's health once they're under your threshold, and more often the lower they get.
Both are off on your account (encounterWarningsEnabled "0" and encounterTimelineEnabled "0"). Boss Warnings puts big text on screen for a boss's critical casts, like Gilded Destruction or Fingers of Gul'dan.
BigWigsAurasOnly blocks BigWigs from passing these on. Check which one ends up drawing them.
Audio alerts can say when your target starts a cast you can kick. That's a Rebuke cue on Ret. It only covers your target, which is a limit and also keeps it quiet.
If a cast can't be kicked, Rebuke won't help: it's DP or move. Ground Pound, Inferno and Drain Life are all on your list as un-kickable. Give that colour its own meaning.
Blizzard marks some enemy casts as important. Platynator can colour those even though addons can't read the flag. Run one Vale key and see whether the Spouting Floret bar changes colour.
The cast bar changes colour when you're the target of the cast. That covers Drain Life on you, a Laced Edge teleport, and frontals turned your way.
A small addon: when any nearby mob starts an important cast, show a large copy of its icon, name and bar just under your character. That's where your eyes already are. It's built from display tricks the game still allows.
ArcUI already does this for your focus target. This would do it for every mob.
No code. In a pack with a DP caster, /focus it. ArcUI's focus cast bar is already big and glows on important casts. It turns one small nameplate into one big bar.
Show two or three small icons next to your DP button, but only in the dungeon they belong to. When a cast bar's icon matches one of them, press DP.
TollPips can only filter to "any dungeon" today, so this needs a setting for one dungeon.
Put each killer's real icon next to its row on the Dangers page, so you learn the picture you'll see on the cast bar.
The big icon says "BoP", "WALK OUT" or "BUBBLE" instead of the spell name, coloured like the Dangers page. 10 of the 12 debuffs on that page already have a BigWigs icon.
Record voice files for "B-O-P", "walk out" and "bubble" and hand them to the aura-sound hook. The game plays them itself, so they fire in a key. Each button gets its own sound, and your ear learns the group, not the spell.
Since patch 12.0.7, an addon can attach a sound to these hidden boss debuffs during a key, as long as you're out of combat. So it can set them all up at the start, before the first pull.
Same setup as the Ruia clock: the boss starts the cast, TollPips lights a big DP and makes a sound. Sound works here because the cast isn't hidden. Galvazzt, Hearty Bellow, Fingers of Gul'dan, Corruption Burst, Gilded Destruction.
An addon can give each boss warning its own sound and colour. It has to be set before the pull, never in combat, and then Blizzard plays it itself. This needs Boss Warnings switched on.
You died to Gilded Destruction with DP pressed 19 s earlier. From the pull until his cast, a boss clock shows "HOLD DP" beside the button.
At 46 of your 70 deaths, both DP and Bubble were already on cooldown. Addons can see when both are down. When that happens, TollPips lights your health macro (Healthstone and potion) as the last button left. That's the one you've been skipping.
50% of bubbles and 27% of DPs went out at 85% health or higher. Put Bubble on a key you have to mean, like a shift or two-key bind, and give DP the easiest button.
Spouting Floret comes every ~32 s, and DP every 60 s. So DP covers every second Floret from one Belcher. The Dangers page says "DP on every cast", which can't be done. The other one needs the healer, a potion, or a dead Belcher.
They see the same cast bar. "DP" on voice for your two worst killers costs nothing.
The game still writes the combat log to disk, and every spell in it is named. A small Windows program watches the file and says "DP" when a Sporeblight Belcher starts Spouting Floret.
Biggest unknown: the game saves the file in batches, so the voice could be seconds late. Test that before building anything else. It only reads a file the game writes for you, the same way Warcraft Logs' live uploader does, but Blizzard hasn't said anything about tools like this.
The log records when a key starts, so a card on your phone or second screen could switch to that dungeon's top three killers on its own.
With the same log feed, a smart bulb or keyboard lighting goes gold on a DP cast. Silly, but hard to miss.
Arbiter's timestamps line up with your videos. Cut a 5 s clip of every killer cast in your own recordings, and watch the Vale reel before a Vale key.
For each key, Arbiter counts the listed DP casts that hit you and how many of them you pressed DP during. That gives you a number to push.
A cast bar fills and you press the right button. It uses your Dangers list, and the ones that killed you come up more often. Try it.
A cast starts. Press the button before the bar fills. Keys: D DP · B Bubble · M Move · P BoP · K Kick · X Kill · C Cleanse · S Stack. Cast times come from the Dangers notes (3 s if a note doesn't give one). Casts that killed you come up more often.
Researched and written by Claude, an AI, overnight on 22 September 2026, from the sources above. Nothing in the game was changed: no addon edits and no settings changes. None of it has been tried in a key yet, and every Test it and Build it is still to do.