Mana Bars

[[Druid]]

For all those that don't know what I mean by mana bars:
There are small programmes that make WC3 display small blue bars right underneath your hp bars displaying the unit's mana.
Looks like this:



I asked Stu! a while ago whether they were permitted here but he told me those are considered hacks. (On a side note I couldn't find any rule prohibiting the use of hacks.)

This is understandable I guess as they give you an (unfair?) advantage over players that do not use this program.

But then again so do item hotkeys and almost everyone uses those.

So what is it that differentiates a hack from "just a useful tool"?

In my eyes the latter is something to overcome a flaw in WC3. Blizzard simply failed to give players the option to revamp their item hotkeys so a bunch of people created warkeys and co to overcome this flaw. And for that reason most people find it ethically okay to use those programmes.

Map hack on the other hand is something that was clearly not intended by blizzard and for that reason is considered a hack by everyone.

Now let's come back to mana bars: Hack or useful tool?

Personally I'd say it's somewhere in between, maybe even a bit more on the "useful tool" side. I mean you can check out each hero's mana already, in my eyes the main reason there are no mana bars in WC3 is that in ladder games they would simply be annoying rather than useful. Why would you care how much mana that talon has left?
On the other hand you could probably also see it as a hack. Sure, when you're on ts/vent/skype you usually know approximately how much mana your team mates have. And when you're walking to another lane to gank you have enough time to select the heroes there and check out their mana. But when you only get a short glimpse of a hero that's hiding behind trees you usually have no way of knowing how much mana that hero has left. With mana bars you suddenly know. And that's probably why it's currently forbidden.

There is however, a solution (kind of):

Mana bars that work on allied heroes only.

That way it would just make up for the lack of communication resulting from players not being on ts/vent/skype while not providing knowledge of your enemies' mana that you usually wouldn't have.


The idea isn't originally from me, dota-league will introduce this very feature in their hosting tool (link) and as they are the biggest dota league out there they have a huge influence on what most low skilled players find just.
For this reason whether RGC includes a feature like this or not there will be an increasing number of players using mana bars in the future and I would prefer for them to use the allies only version.

Thanks for reading!

[Cnacnel]

Nice, your arguments are exactly the same as mine were when Roger in teamviewer saw manabars folder.:P Though I also added the argument about permanent healthbars once being considered a hack. Yet, I saw also the same reasoning in a link to dl.
I hope the manabars will be shown only for heroes, cuz who needs to see mana for ranged creep? I don't know if it's possible to have the same thing implemented in rgc but that's roger's call.
Btw, this thread should be in suggestions to rgc, not dotarank.

[Frag(-_-)Artist]

I would seriously consider using this tool if it shows numerical value on both heal and mana bars but since its forbidden tool on every league i give it big NO NO.

Imagine yourself playing with undetected mh then ending up on lanparty beign noob like lan misery potm.

Cheers