RageForge

A smart rage display for stance-dancing TBC warriors on the WoW Classic Anniversary realms. Built for PvP-first decision making.

The default rage bar tells you a number. RageForge tells you the cost of your next stance dance, at a glance.

Screenshots

Mid-fight — reading the dump hint at a glance

A realistic mid-combat read: 64 rage on the bar, -39 ghost label and ghost line on the left at the 25-rage retained mark. That tells you instantly that stance-dancing right now costs 39 rage. The fill colors shift through green (free) into gold and orange as the cost climbs.

Rage cap — the full color spectrum

Capped at 100 rage. The full warrior palette is visible at once: emerald (free dance) -> gold -> molten orange -> blood red (heavy loss). The -75 hint says you'd lose 75 rage if you danced now. The Battle Shout reminder shows a live 49s countdown and starts flashing under 30 seconds.

Idle — the bar at 0 rage

Idle bar at 0 rage, currently unlocked (/rf lock toggles this). Threshold ticks at 10 / 15 / 25 / 30 / 50 / 75 sit outside the bar to the right. The Battle Shout icon at the bottom-left appears whenever the buff is missing.

Creator

RageForge is built by Chase Sommer, a game designer who loves to play and build addons and communities around WoW.

• X: https://x.com/SommerChase
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@chasesommer
• Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/cw/chasesommer

Why

If you've ever stood in front of a healer thinking "do I have enough rage to dump and stance-dance into Overpower right now, or will I bleed out?" — this addon answers that question without you doing math.

Features (v0.9.8)

• Smoother no-art curved bar rendered as 1-pixel horizontal rows with full-opacity centers and soft left/right feather strips. Row centers are pixel-snapped to reduce sampling shimmer; feathering softens the visible staircase that rectangular UI textures naturally create on a curve.

• Blended brighter rage colors instead of hard zone bands. The retained rage band stays green, then smoothly blends through gold -> molten orange -> blood red as stance-dance cost increases.

• Full-opacity current rage row — the fill now rounds the animated value to the nearest whole rage before painting slices, so the current rage band never appears as a half-faded row.

• Left-side decision hints — the retained-rage notch, ghost line, and -X dump hint live on the left side of the bar, keeping the right side reserved for threshold tick labels.

• Stance icon rail — cropped Battle / Defensive / Berserker stance icons sit in a tight stack touching the bar's left edge. Icons are square-cropped and rotated so the spell icon's top points left; inactive stances are only alpha-dimmed, not color-tinted or desaturated. The active stance uses Blizzard's action-button border art as a gold outline.

• Battle Shout reminder — a Battle Shout icon appears at the bottom-left of the rage bar when the buff is missing or has less than 30 seconds remaining, then flashes until refreshed. If the buff is active but expiring, a countdown appears over the icon. Suppressed while dead or ghosted.

• Researched rendering limitation: Classic can crop/transform textures with SetTexCoord, and WeakAuras uses custom progress-texture math for circular displays, but Classic does not give arbitrary curved masking for our vertical bar. A perfect bend will require a custom TGA/BLP skin.

• No background chrome. When the bar is locked, nothing exists on screen except the bar, ticks, and labels. When unlocked, the "RAGE" label shifts to "RAGE \194\183 drag" in light blue as a subtle drag cue.

• In-game settings window via /rf options. Lock, scale, Tactical Mastery rank, display toggles, stance icons, and font size. Live preview - changes apply as you click. RageForge still attempts Blizzard AddOns-tab registration when the client supports it, but /rf options is the reliable path.

• Color-coded stance-dance economy zones, dynamic to your Tactical Mastery rank:

  • Green (0..retained) — free dance, you keep everything.
  • Yellow (retained..50) — small loss on dance, fine in most cases.
  • Orange (50..75) — meaningful loss; consider dumping rage first.
  • Red (75..100) — heavy loss; dump rage before you dance.

• Dump hint — a live -X label next to the bar showing exactly how much rage you'd lose if you stance-dance right now. Yellow / orange / red by severity.

• Ghost-line marker — bright notch on the bar's left edge at the rage you'd land on after a dance, with a horizontal line extending to the dump-hint label. Hides entirely when a dance would lose nothing.

• Threshold ticks at 10 / 15 / 25 / 30 / 50 / 75 — the rage costs that matter (Overpower, HS, Hamstring, MS / Rend, post-dance floor, cap warn). Sit OUTSIDE the bar to the right; never cross the fill.

• Rage-cap warning — top of the bar pulses yellow within 5 rage of cap so you spot wasted rage in heated fights.

• Consistent typography — RageForge bundles Prototype.ttf in RageForge/Fonts/ for the bar UI, with Fonts\SKURRI.TTF as a fallback. The bundled Prototype.txt from the font's author is shipped alongside it per the readme's redistribution note.

• Drag-to-move + scale + lock via slash commands. The bar is invisible chrome when locked; the RAGE label changes to RAGE \194\183 drag when unlocked so you know it can be moved.

Install

Option A: Copy (simple, recommended for normal use)

cd C:\Users\rober\rageforge
.\install.ps1

That copies RageForge\ into:

C:\Program Files (x86)\World of Warcraft\_anniversary_\Interface\AddOns\RageForge\

Option B: Junction (recommended while developing / tweaking)

.\install.ps1 -Symlink

This creates a directory junction so edits in this repo are immediately visible in WoW. Just /reload in game (or relog) to pick up Lua changes.

Junctions don't require admin rights. If the WoW folder is in a non-default location, pass -WowPath:

.\install.ps1 -Symlink -WowPath "D:\Games\World of Warcraft\_anniversary_"

Uninstall

.\install.ps1 -Uninstall

Release Packaging

For CurseForge or GitHub releases, build a clean addon zip:

.\package.ps1

That creates dist\RageForge-v<version>.zip with the required top-level RageForge\ folder. The package script removes local-only personal-use fonts from the release artifact.

In-game usage

After installing, log in. You should see the bar to the left of center screen.

Easiest way to configure: type /rf. You get a movable RageForge settings window with checkboxes and sliders. Changes preview live.

For power users / scripts, every setting is also a slash command:

/rf options      open the RageForge settings window
/rf              open the RageForge settings window
/rf tm 5         set Tactical Mastery to 5/5 (25 rage retained on dance)
/rf tm 3         set Tactical Mastery to 3/5 (15 rage retained)
/rf tm 0         no Tactical Mastery (0 rage retained)
/rf lock         toggle lock; unlocked = drag to move
/rf scale 1.0    set UI scale (0.5 .. 2.0)
/rf reset        reset position to default
/rf ticks        toggle threshold tick marks
/rf stances      toggle stance icon rail
/rf ghost        toggle the ghost (post-stance-dance) line

The most important command is /rf tm <0|3|5>. Everything else is cosmetic; this one controls the math.

How the math works

Stance change in TBC drops your rage to min(currentRage, retainedRage), where retainedRage is determined by your Tactical Mastery rank (0 / 15 / 25 for 0/5, 3/5, 5/5 respectively).

So the value of a stance dance is:

rage_lost = max(0, currentRage - retainedRage)

The ghost line is drawn at min(currentRage, retainedRage). The fill above that line is, visually, "rage you're about to throw away if you dance now."

Roadmap

If v1 lands well, here are the modules I'd add next (in priority order for PvP):

1. Diminishing Returns tracker — Hamstring / Concussion Blow / Intercept stun DRs per target. Huge in arena.
2. Enemy PvP trinket / WotF tracker — know when to land your CC.
3. Charge / Intercept / Death Wish / Recklessness CD bars — burst and mobility planner.
4. Heroic Strike queued indicator — HS is on next-swing in TBC, easy to forget you queued it (and lose rage on it).
5. Hamstring + Rend uptime — kite/peel maintenance.
6. MS debuff on target — make sure your healing reduction is applied.

What to Add Before a Wider Launch

• Screenshots/GIFs for GitHub, CurseForge, and the addon page. A single combat screenshot plus one settings-window screenshot will make this much easier for players to trust.
• A short CurseForge description with the same feature bullets as this README, plus a clear note that this targets TBC Anniversary warriors.
• A small icon/logo for the addon listing. Long term, a custom warrior-style bar texture could also replace the no-art row renderer for a smoother premium look.
• A first feedback pass from real arena/BG use before calling it 1.0.

Files

rageforge/
+-- README.md            this file
+-- install.ps1          copy / junction the addon into WoW AddOns
+-- package.ps1          build clean CurseForge/GitHub release zip
+-- CHANGELOG.md         release notes
+-- LICENSE              MIT license
+-- RageForge/
|   +-- RageForge.toc    addon manifest (Interface 20505 = TBC Anniversary)
|   +-- Config.lua       SavedVariables, defaults, /rf slash command
|   +-- Core.lua         init, event router, OnUpdate driver
|   +-- RageBar.lua      the curved bar, zones, ghost line, ticks, glow
|   +-- Options.lua      standalone /rf settings window
+-- docs/
|   +-- branding/
|   |   +-- banner.png   2:1 hero banner; GitHub social preview, README header
|   |   +-- logo.png     1:1 square icon; CurseForge thumbnail, app/avatar
|   +-- screenshots/     in-game screenshots referenced from this README
+-- .cursor/rules/       Cursor IDE rules for working on this addon

Compatibility

• Target client: WoW Classic Anniversary, TBC content phase (Interface 20505, version 2.5.5).
• The addon is class-agnostic in terms of API: it only reads your rage and combat log. It will load on any class but is only useful for warriors.
• If a future Anniversary patch bumps the Interface number, WoW will mark the addon "out of date." Either tick "Load out of date addons" at the AddOns screen or bump the ## Interface: line in RageForge.toc.

Credits

RageForge bundles the Prototype font for its bar UI. Prototype was created by Justin Callaghan and is based on signage from Walt Disney World's Epcot park.

• Author: Justin Callaghan
• Author site: https://mickeyavenue.com/
• Font listing: https://fontmeme.com/fonts/justin-callaghan-listing/

The font ships alongside its original Prototype.txt readme inside RageForge/Fonts/ as the author asks. All credit for the typeface goes to Justin Callaghan; RageForge only redistributes it.

License

MIT. See LICENSE.

RageForge code is MIT-licensed. The bundled Prototype.ttf is the property of Justin Callaghan and is not covered by RageForge's MIT license — see the Credits section above and the bundled RageForge/Fonts/Prototype.txt for the font's own terms. If the font author requests removal or you want a 100% permissively-licensed alternative, the addon already falls back cleanly to Fonts\SKURRI.TTF (shipped with WoW) with no code changes.