Since the client is being remade and the "we got a bunch of spaghetti code from SOE and don't know what to do with it" excuse isn't going to work anymore it's time for a suggestion. I'll make it short. (Example 1) So imagine you have Champion A that attacks Champion B. You know where both champions are on the map. So you could draw a line between Champion A and Champion B. Now if you make the end at Champion B pointy you'll have an arrow. If you slap "X Damage" next to it you'll have displayed a basic game interaction in a way that is easy to understand. Similar things could be done for everything else. Abilities that damage, heal and buff could be easily displayed that way. Spells, AoEs and global effects would need some adjustment. For example when Xulus enters the game a red circle could emit from him that shows the damage done on each champion as it touches it. [Lines are best suited for ranged attacks/effects. For attacks at RNG 1 it could be claw marks, a sword, a fist... whatever feels fancy. Or just a triangle without the line attached to it. Whatever.] (Example 2) Then you could take each action and put it somewhere. I chose the upper left corner but every place works. For example if you attacked some bat with a fairy you could display the tiny picture of the fairy, a bit towards the right of that would be the picture of the bat. Between them could be the chosen attack/ability symbol and some kind of pointy arrow pointing right with "X Damage" written below it. If you cast a spell it would just show the the spell icon with perhaps a quick description "AoE: 10 cold dmg" next to it. You could then hover over every of those icons to get more information. Like if you casted a spell and hovered over that spell icon it would light up the area where it was casted and perhaps pop up more information if necessary. In case of attacks it could pop up those arrows that already faded away long ago again, for example. (Bonus points if that includes 'holographic' copies of the affected champions in the positions where they were when the attack occurred.) Those events would then pass out of existence as other things are happening. You could maybe make the event-list scrollable if you are hovering over it or pushing a certain button. Perhaps you could make the whole thing transparent to now block too much of the players view and it becomes better visible after a certain input or when the mouse is on top of it. Basically it would be my idea of a useful combat log. I couldn't put any effort into a mock up. But I made one anyway. Maybe it'll help somebody. The red + in example 2 is supposed to be a "review" of an AoE of the past. Which would pop back up again if you hover over the related icon.
