In patch 9.2, WoW might be getting click- and mouseover-casting, two long-needed quality of life features

Healers and PVPers everywhere, we have some potential good news for you. According to some strings that have been found on the patch 9.2 PTR client, it looks like World of Warcraft is finally catching up with the modern years, and adding some very beloved functionalities — namely click-casting, and mouseover-casting — to the default UI. Though Blizzard refers to these features as “click binding” and “mouseover binding,” they seem to work just like addons and macros that currently do click- and mouseover-casting.

For years, players have depended on using third-party addons or macros to quickly cast spells on their targets in one of two ways:

• Click casting: Clicking on a unit frame or target on the field, casting a spell bound to that mouse button on the target
• Mouseover casting: Hovering their cursor over a unit frame or target on the field, then pressing the appropriate keybind to cast a spell on the target

Anyone who’s used these features before knows that they’re an absolute game changer, particularly for healers. These abilities make it simpler and faster to cast spells on targets, and it’s nearly impossible to go back once you get used to using them. But to those who might be unfamiliar with what those concepts even mean: Here is a quick breakdown.

Click binding will let you keep your raid healthy by playing whack-a-mole

What the datamined strings are calling “click binding” is the ability to directly assign abilities — or even macros — to your mouse buttons. For example: If you’re a shaman healer, you might bind the Earth Shield spell to your middle mouse button, so that merely clicking on the tank’s unitframe with the middle mouse button casts Earth Shield on them. The most popular addon that adds that functionality to the game is Clique.

Based on the datamined strings, we see that WoW’s click binding feature looks robust enough: It’s seemingly going to allow you to bind both spells and macros to your clicks, which means that even more advanced players who have gotten used to customizing their play through addons might have a use for it. It’s certainly promising enough at the moment.

Mouseover binding makes you feel like you’re casting spells with your mind

Mouseover binding is the ability to cast spells by pressing the appropriate key on your action bars, except the spell is cast on whatever target your mouse cursor is hovering over instead of the target you’ve selected. This could be both a unit frame — which essentially allows healers to play the game by hovering their mouse over the frames of their party or raid — or the actual character models that are out there in the world, which is something that PVP enthusiasts often take advantage of.

Technically, mouseover binding is already in the game, in the form of macros. Players have been taking advantage of specific macro commands — such as @mouseover, combined with modifiers like harm, help, or nodead to further empower their commands — to perform this function for years. They usually combine this built-in function with unit frame addons, such as Grid, to facilitate the process.

But with patch 9.2, you won’t have to depend on those complex macros, which makes this feature available to a larger number of players who might not be as well-versed in macros (or interested in learning them). Based on the datamined strings, it looks like players will be able to determine whether the mouseover binding is always active, or if it will demand a modifier key (like SHIFT, CTRL, or ALT) to be pressed in order to enable it.

Due to this implementation, it looks like the built-in mouseover binding won’t be quite as robust as what players can craft themselves with their own personal macros. It also remains to be seen if the mouseover binding function will be integrated with click binding, so that you could, for instance, mouseover a unit frame and get a specific spell to be cast with a single click.

Nevertheless, this is all very promising. It’s great to see the base WoW client add these types of features, to open them up to a larger number of players, and perhaps make healing more palatable and attractive to a wider range of people. It remains to be seen what the final feature ends up looking like in the game, but it’s certainly good news.

The caveat, of course, is that this is all just datamined information, and still subject to change. Not everything that turns up on a PTR or beta client ends up making it to the final product, and therefore, reader discretion is advised.