Need to show a health bar over an EnderCrystal

So I'm working on a plugin which involves attacking an EnderCrystal multiple times to destroy it. I need to have the count shown for how many times it's been damaged. I already have a method that creates some health bar text to show over a LivingEntity's head, but the problem is that EnderCrystal does not implement LivingEntity, and thus cannot receive a custom nameplate.

My initial thoughts were to put a bat on top and make the bat invisible, but that wouldn't work because invisible mobs don't show their nameplates, and a bat in the way would be unsightly.

I then stumbled upon this thread and subsequently this concept. This seems to be similar to what I want, however it requires the player to actively "look at" a block to show the message and I think setting it up with code (messing with Block, Map, etc) would be a pain when all I want is a simple nametag.

Finally, I found the holograms library, however I don't know if it will be reliable and unchanged in future versions of Minecraft, since it's technically a bug.

So now I'm sitting here stuck, just trying to decide whether or not I should use the bug or not. What are your thoughts, and can you think of any viable alternatives?

Thanks!

 

Abuse the bug for all it's worth. That's what Bukkit plugins are all about!

Err... not to bash the entire community or anything...

 

The Ender Crystal isn't a block, It's an entity. just give it a custom display name and change it to visible.

Maybe you have to create a "custom" Ender crystal which has live. There are some tutorials about that in the "Resources" forums. A great one was made by TeeePeee