[Guide] Spell swapping as of 3.3.2 (without MES)

[unqART]

 

Here's a guide for how to swap spell animations, working as of now (patch 3.3.3). None of the programs mentioned were created by me, with credit going to respective authors.

 

Although there are other guides based on Glitchy's MES, such crashes on my computer, so here's an alternative for any one else experiencing the same issue. A guide was made by Balnir here a couple years ago ("Spell Swapping without MES Patch 2.4"), which served as excellent inspiration for this but had column numbers which are now either out-of-date or based on an unknown different DBC editor being used.

 

Step 1:

Download MyWarcraftStudio from

MyWarCraftStudio.rar

 

Step 2:

Running MyWarcraftStudio, open patch-enUS-3.MPQ which is found in the Data\enUS subdirectory of your WoW folder. If you're european, the names may be slightly different, like enGB instead of enUS, etc.

 

When you first open that MPQ file, you may or may not see a DBFilesClient directory.

 

If you don't initially see DBFilesClient, then go to the bottom left of the screen and set it to show all files in the pull-down menu.

 

Go into DBFilesClient, and select Spell.dbc before right-clicking and doing extract file (to any convenient location, perhaps your desktop).

 

Close MyWarcraftStudio.

 

Step 3:

Now you need a DBC files editor. A variety of such programs exist, but, to ensure these instructions work exactly, let's use the same one I did.

 

Download the file at

MEGAUPLOAD - The leading online storage and file delivery service

Alternatively, download it from another mirror: Mediafire

Extract from that package.rar the DBC_Editor directory.

 

Step 4:

Run the DBC editor program, opening the Spell.dbc file we extracted earlier. It is a big file, so it may take a minute to load.

 

Scroll all the way over to field 136. You'll see spell names there. Click on field 136, and now the spells will be mostly sorted alphabetically (though they'll look out of order at the start). Scroll down until you find the spell which has the animation you want copied.

 

In this example, let's say you want the cool-looking bubble of Divine Aegis to be applied to another spell.

 

We find 5 entries for Divine Aegis. Now look at field 131. Some of them have no animation referenced in field 131 (just a 0 there), but we see the bottom 2 entries have an animation number there. In this case, that's 10895 (while, if we were copying a different spell, there would be an animation number other than 10895).

 

Save that number so you remember it, such as copying it to notepad / the clipboard.

 

Step 5:

 

Now we find the spell we want to change.

 

Let's say we want Rejuvenation to create that bubble when cast on a target. We scroll down further to find Rejuvenation. We see there are many Rejuvenation entries. If you scroll way right to field 153, you can see how some of them correspond to different ranks of the spell. The unmodified file has a different animation number set for them in field 131, in this case a 32 for the original rejuvenation animation.

 

For the sloppy method, simply replace all those 32 numbers with 10895, pasting 10895 over 32 a few times.

 

Alternatively, you may be more precise by scrolling over to fields 153 and 170 to see ranks and descriptions, since you may save time by replacing only the ranks of the spell which matter to you.

 

Step 6:

 

You may repeat steps 4 and 5 as appropriate to swap animations for more spells if desired, just remembering that spell animation numbers are in field 131, five fields left of the spell names. Sounds are also changed in the process.

 

Step 7:

 

Then we save the file, which, due to its size, may take a couple minutes to complete. Close the DBC Editor.

 

Run MyWarcraftStudio again. This time, go to Pack -> Create MPQ archive. Name the new file you are creating to be patch-#.MPQ where # is a single-digit number, of your choice as long as it doesn't contradict with files you already have in your WoWData directory. For instance, you could name it patch-7.MPQ

 

Then go to Pack -> Add file to archive.

 

Select the Spells.dbc file you earlier edited. There's a trick at this point: Before you click the final ok to add the file, replace its Spell.dbc name in the dialog box with DBFilesClient\Spell.dbc

 

That'll cause MyWarcraftStudio to create a DBFilesClient directory within your new MPQ file and put it there, as needed.

 

Go to Pack -> Save and close archive. Close MyWarcraftStudio.

 

Move your new patch-7.MPQ file to the Data subdirectory of your World of Warcraft folder, if you didn't already save it there.

 

Run WoW, and you should see your new animation working. In the above example, we made Rejuvenation cause a bubble (looking like Divine Aegis) to appear around players it is active upon.

Credits:Sekan