Diamond Threat Meter

[Endus]

I know we all loved Omen. However, since 2.4, updates have been so frequent, and so frequently break any older version, that keeping a guild updated to a compatible version can be a pain in the butt. A few guildmates suggested a new threat meter to me, new with 2.4, and if it does what it claims, it may be better than Omen all around. As the title says, it's Diamond Threat Meter (Curse page)

I have yet to test it myself, but since I didn't see a thread here, figured I'd ask if anyone has tried it, or at least point it out to others.

What looks like the biggest advantage to me is that it tracks threat regardless of others' addons (though perhaps not as accurately). If a raid member doesn't have DTM, they still get tracked. It also tracks each mob separately (which was the big reason Omen was superior), and is supposedly compatible with Omen2 to boot, if a raid member really doesn't want to switch.


So . . . anyone have testimonials or criticisms?

[guillex]

It actually looks promising ... It can talk to Threatlib 2.0, but has its own threat engine ... Hmmmmm. Probably give this a try tonight, if the wife'll let me.

[Maethoriel]

Frequent updates and changes have allways been both, a strength and
weakness of addons posted on wowace.com.
The weakness is easy to overcome by just using an updater like WAU or
jWowaceupdate. In total, don't care about new versions beeing
incompatible with version that have been out a few days. This was done
right after the patch happend. And yes, have to be said: Stuff from
wowace is beta. If it breaks you get to keep both pieces. ;P

And to give some background and history why it was broken a few times:

The last breakage of Threat-2.0 (which Omen uses) was Revision 67545
which was released at "01-Apr-2008"

Code: Select all

-- Need to update this when backwards incompatible changes are made
local LAST_BACKWARDS_COMPATIBLE_REVISION = 67545


http://svn.wowace.com/wowace/trunk/Thre ... at-2.0.lua

Changelog:

Code: Select all

Threat-2.0:
- Protocol change to fix issue with non-escaped characters. BACKWARDS INCOMPATIBLE BLAH BLAH YES OLDER CLIENTS ARE BROKEN.


Stop making old versions of omen incompatible with the new versions! It's driving me and my raid absolutely insane!

Well, I guess I could just not fix critical bugs that cause some people to just plain not work with other people.

Seriously though, if I make a breaking change, it's because it was absolutely necessary. I hate doing it, it's not fun doing it, and I know the people using Omen hate doing it, but I do it because it has to be done.

I also make a commit note in all capital letters noting that the change was made, and that it's backwards incompatible. I really do my best to heads-up people about it.

http://www.wowace.com/forums/index.php? ... #msg197588

Protocol changes/backward compatibility breakage should be about done by this point, barring any major bug discoveries.

Bloodboil and Illidan bugs should have both been fixed last night.

http://www.wowace.com/forums/index.php? ... #msg198924

*** Edit ***
And yes, will also look at this new threat meter but i doubt i will replace
my Omen2. It's an interesting feature that it estimates the threat of others
not using any threatmeter, i'm curious how this affects performance and
memory usage if it does these calculations for others instead of just
for myself.

[Wyleai]

What looks like the biggest advantage to me is that it tracks threat regardless of others' addons (though perhaps not as accurately). If a raid member doesn't have DTM, they still get tracked. It also tracks each mob separately (which was the big reason Omen was superior), and is supposedly compatible with Omen2 to boot, if a raid member really doesn't want to switch.

This actually might be against its favor. What it shows is that the addon, like old KTM, is "making up" its numbers out of guesswork rather than actual threat.

Unless something else has changed in 2.4. Previously Omen could only track threat from people who had threat-x.x because there was no other way to know the actual threat other people had and the addon was not willing to make guesses.

Frequent updates and changes have allways been both, a strength and
weakness of addons posted on wowace.com.
The weakness is easy to overcome by just using an updater like WAU or
jWowaceupdate.

Jwowupdater:
http://code.google.com/p/jwowupdater/
- Works on both Mac and PC, and can update non-Ace addons as well. In addition, you can configure it to update itself. It can 'clean' your WTF folder to get rid of data that is causing errors, and lastly you can set it to put all the libs in your addons into externals and start downloading the newest versions of those as well.

Oh, and you can have it delete all of your addons, redownload them, and re-install them. Very useful after a patch or if you think something has been corrupted but don't know what.

[Levantine]

That, and I just got Omen2 looking how I want it.

[Endus]

Frequent updates and changes have allways been both, a strength and weakness of addons posted on wowace.com.

I agree. I'd rather stick with Omen2, and have everyone in my guild update daily.

However, last time we ran Gruul and Mag, I had all of 5 people showing up on Omen2. My issue isn't the principle, it's that my guild's a casual raiding guild and trying to get everyone to USE a threat meter, let alone update daily, is like trying to herd retarded cats.

This actually might be against its favor. What it shows is that the addon, like old KTM, is "making up" its numbers out of guesswork rather than actual threat.

Unless something else has changed in 2.4. Previously Omen could only track threat from people who had threat-x.x because there was no other way to know the actual threat other people had and the addon was not willing to make guesses.

Well, obviously the combat log's changed. It all depends on how accurate DTM's guesswork is. I haven't looked into the code or anything, but since we can inspect people's talents, it seems plausible to code a threat meter to look for threat-affecting talents when someone joins, and then track any threat-affecting spells real-time. This would, in theory, be pretty much as accurate as having it track your own threat, since it works under the same principles, just detecting other people's buffs and talents rather than just your own.

But that's wild guesswork on my part, I haven't tested it yet and I was kind of iffy on that part too; hopeful that it works as described, but worried that it's a giant piece of suck that fails to achieve what it claims. That's part of the reason I started the thread; since this threat meter's getting press and support, I figured we need to hash it out and see if it's worthwhile, or garbage.

That, and I just got Omen2 looking how I want it.

Lack of visual customization is a big negative for me. But, if it means I don't have to get frustrated with half my raid not updating their threat meters, I'd be willing to swallow that and hope they add it in later.

[Levantine]

This actually might be against its favor. What it shows is that the addon, like old KTM, is "making up" its numbers out of guesswork rather than actual threat.

Unless something else has changed in 2.4. Previously Omen could only track threat from people who had threat-x.x because there was no other way to know the actual threat other people had and the addon was not willing to make guesses.

Well, obviously the combat log's changed. It all depends on how accurate DTM's guesswork is. I haven't looked into the code or anything, but since we can inspect people's talents, it seems plausible to code a threat meter to look for threat-affecting talents when someone joins, and then track any threat-affecting spells real-time. This would, in theory, be pretty much as accurate as having it track your own threat, since it works under the same principles, just detecting other people's buffs and talents rather than just your own.

But that's wild guesswork on my part, I haven't tested it yet and I was kind of iffy on that part too; hopeful that it works as described, but worried that it's a giant piece of suck that fails to achieve what it claims. That's part of the reason I started the thread; since this threat meter's getting press and support, I figured we need to hash it out and see if it's worthwhile, or garbage.

Why do I get the feeling that this addon is thusly going to be the death of many many many lower end machines.

[dab]

You can inspect people talents ingame now.

If add-ons have access to it (and I'm pretty much sure they do) there is no more guessing involved.

[Lore]

Omen and Threat-2.0 update frequently because they are constantly being corrected and made more accurate. It boggles my mind that anyone views that as a downside purely because they have to take 2 minutes to run jWowUpdater before logging in.

[Endus]

Omen and Threat-2.0 update frequently because they are constantly being corrected and made more accurate. It boggles my mind that anyone views that as a downside purely because they have to take 2 minutes to run jWowUpdater before logging in.

I don't view it as a downside.

Everyone in a 25-man raid? Chances are there are a couple who're too lazy.

My point wasn't that updating addons is bad. My point was that DTM might work regardless of whether everybody has or not.

[Rykis]

What looks like the biggest advantage to me is that it tracks threat regardless of others' addons (though perhaps not as accurately). If a raid member doesn't have DTM, they still get tracked. It also tracks each mob separately (which was the big reason Omen was superior), and is supposedly compatible with Omen2 to boot, if a raid member really doesn't want to switch.

This actually might be against its favor. What it shows is that the addon, like old KTM, is "making up" its numbers out of guesswork rather than actual threat.

Unless something else has changed in 2.4. Previously Omen could only track threat from people who had threat-x.x because there was no other way to know the actual threat other people had and the addon was not willing to make guesses.

Frequent updates and changes have allways been both, a strength and
weakness of addons posted on wowace.com.
The weakness is easy to overcome by just using an updater like WAU or
jWowaceupdate.

Jwowupdater:
http://code.google.com/p/jwowupdater/
- Works on both Mac and PC, and can update non-Ace addons as well. In addition, you can configure it to update itself. It can 'clean' your WTF folder to get rid of data that is causing errors, and lastly you can set it to put all the libs in your addons into externals and start downloading the newest versions of those as well.

Oh, and you can have it delete all of your addons, redownload them, and re-install them. Very useful after a patch or if you think something has been corrupted but don't know what.

I just checked out that Jwowupdater thing you posted ...
I think I want to have the authors babies. Thanks for the info.

[nicolax]

how to solve your problems :

- make a topic about omen on your guild forum, post the version everyone will use (and i mean everyone, even if omen has been updated 10 times during the day, stick with one version, force players that upgrade it every 2 seconds to downgrade their version), make it mandatory to download that version of omen before starting the raid. works very well.

[Maethoriel]

how to solve your problems :

- make a topic about omen on your guild forum, post the version everyone will use (and i mean everyone, even if omen has been updated 10 times during the day, stick with one version, force players that upgrade it every 2 seconds to downgrade their version), make it mandatory to download that version of omen before starting the raid. works very well.

This kind of aproach, while valid, is kind of risky. New versions are not
pushed out just for fun, there is most likely a reason something was changed.
IF you want to do it that way, monitor the changelog yourself and
decide when to upgrade this version everybody has to use.

One has to keep in mind though, addons posted on wowace.com are beta!
It's not release software but it works for me. The one or two times per month
an addon breaks because of a wrong commit are no reason for me not to use
an updater.

[Endus]

how to solve your problems :

- make a topic about omen on your guild forum, post the version everyone will use (and i mean everyone, even if omen has been updated 10 times during the day, stick with one version, force players that upgrade it every 2 seconds to downgrade their version), make it mandatory to download that version of omen before starting the raid. works very well.

I have enough trouble just trying to get everyone to use a threat meter at all, let alone a specific version. Like I said, we're casual, and we're still working our way through T4 (Kara on farm, Gruul down once, only taken one shot at Mag), so a lot of our members are brand-new to raiding.

My point was that rather than this comparatively complicated solution you present, If DTM works as it says, I can just use that, and even if a couple people in the raid don't have the right/any version, it'll track their threat anyway.

From what little I've used it, it seems to be working pretty well, actually. Though that "little" was tracking my threat vs a lock and his voidwalker on my rogue alt for a handful of fights. I'll give it a thorough run this Thursday/Friday in Kara.


And on that, I'm seeing a lot of "just use Omen, regardless" commentary. C'mon guys, I'd expect some of you to at least TRY Diamond first. It may be junk, but a couple of my members said it works great. So I'm trying it, and since there wasn't a thread on it here, I figured I'd mention it to start a discussion and get a wider sampling of opinions. It's possible DTM is inferior. But I'd like to see that be tested, rather than just assumed.

[Levantine]

I'm lazy, and DMT is ugly. More than enough reason for me to stick with Omen.