Hermes: The great messenger of your raid's cooldowns!

[inthedrops]

Hermes tracks your raid's cooldowns, and displays them using configurable buttons or bars. What's unique about Hermes is it's ability to tell you who "does" and "does not" have a particular cooldown available. If you're a raid leader, healer, tank or anyone who has to coordinate cooldowns, you'll appreciate the approach Hermes takes.

Hermes also tracks cooldowns of non Hermes users using it's Spell Monitor feature.

Some people only want to see spells that are on cooldown. If that sounds like you, check out Hermes_LightUI. It's a UI replacement plugin for Hermes.

And yes, Hermes tracks the ever elusive Warlock Soulstone Resurrection and Shaman Reincarnation abilities.

For more details, full release notes, and other updates please visit the Hermes home page at:
http://wow.curseforge.com/addons/hermes/

Walkthrough Videos
Part 1: Hermes basics
Part 2: UI and other configuration options
Part 3: Using the Spell Monitor to track non Hermes users

Feature Comparison


Example Images

Classic Button Style, condenses information cleanly:


Bars laid out vertically, one spell on top of another:


Clean looking bars laid out horizontally, one spell on top of another:


Super clean bars (no nameplate) laid out vertically (spells left/right of each other)


Spells are ordered manually via drag and drop, and can be moved from one container to another:

[Vrimmel]

I like this. Going to forward this to my guild, although I doubt they will care enough to change anything.

[fuzzygeek]

This looks v. useful.

[inthedrops]

Thanks, If there are people who are willing to get one or two people in their raid to use this, and test it out for a simple raid, that would be extremely valuable to me. Especially if you post back your findings (good or bad) or PM me.

I would like to identify any major functionality/design issues before investing into new features and adding complexity. Things I'm looking for include: Any Lua errors, inaccurate data, disconnected players, network bandwith, etc.

For any non english locale clients, while It's not localized at the moment I believe the core of the addon should still work. I took great care to rely on spellid's, class token names, etc. instead of using localized data. However I have not localized the help strings, ui config, and various other messages coming from the addon itself.

[inthedrops]

Just an FYI. Ran a full raid tonight with three people running the addon. No Lua errors or any other funny business. Also it was nice to see that memory and CPU usage was VERY low (0.11% cpu usage across all addons). Total bandwidth used was ~20kb

I feel much better about the performance and stability at this point.

[fuzzygeek]

Ran with this last night; the two priests in the raid loved it. For me it was nice to be able to call for a specific CD from a specific person (e.g., "Adam I will need a pain suppression in five seconds").

Full marks.

[inthedrops]

Wow! quite the compliment from you Fuzzy. Also glad it worked well for you. As it happens I did my heavy testing with two priests too

One thing one of them found out last night was that Power Word: Barrier, if entered by name, will not show the right spell. It's simply because there are more than one spellid's with that name. The solution is to manually enter the spellid for the "correct" spell instead of the name. I plan on fixing that by informing the user that there is more than one spellid with the name and somehow letting them choose. Easier said than done probably. It's not a priority.

Also, just did some updates today but I'm not going to do another beta build until later in the weekend.

1. I deemphasized spells unavailable to the raid, as well as those having only senders who are offline, dead, or in differing zone. It's hard to explain but the net effect should be that the available spells stand out more. Compare this screenshot to that above and you can get the general idea. I noticed the need during the last raid. I hope I haven't over done it though.



2. I added party support. So Hermes can run in a party now. It's disabled by default, see config.

3. Fixed a couple bugs related to creation of new profiles.

[inthedrops]

Also, I'm after suggestions as to what kinds of actions should be taken when clicking buttons. Currently, while undocumented, it'll resync the spell across all users. It's really not a good idea to make that functionality so easy to do, as it shouldn't be necessary, and it also resets cooldown animations which might make people go "huh?".

I couldn't think of anything extremely valuable so unless I hear good ideas I'm not going to think about it very much.

[Fetzie]

I'm thinking clicking on a button could print a message "Pain Supression needed by PlayerName" or even send a whisper message to the player (or one of them) telling them that they need to cast it.

When you cast a spell tracked by the addon it could perhaps automatically send a message to /raidwarning or raid chat or to the player you cast it on?

I don't know if these are functions you can use in combat, but I think they could be useful.

In my experience, people hardly notice messages posted in raid chat or raidwarning, but respond to whispers immediately. Probably because the game plays an audio file when you get a PM.

[inthedrops]

In my experience, people hardly notice messages posted in raid chat or raidwarning, but respond to whispers immediately. Probably because the game plays an audio file when you get a PM.

That and the boss mods spam crap all over their screen Thanks for the suggestions!

Update: beta2 (11.20.2010)
New Features:
* Party support (disabled by default, see config)
* Deemphasized unavailable spells.
* Now localized (contribute here: http://wow.curseforge.com/addons/hermes/localization/)

Bug fixes:
* Fixed a couple bugs with new profiles
* A couple other bug fixes.

Really hoping to keep this addon simple and focused to it's task. So far it's coming along well.

[inthedrops]

When you cast a spell tracked by the addon it could perhaps automatically send a message to /raidwarning or raid chat or to the player you cast it on?

This is a great idea but I won't have Hermes do it. It would require combat log monitoring and/or more event handling. Plus there are tons of mods out there that do this task well.

I like the whisper idea when a button is clicked. When there's only one person with the spell available it's pretty obvious who to whisper. But the following scenarios pose non obvious answers:

1. What happens when all players have the spell on cooldown? (send whisper to the person who will have it next?)
2. What happens when more than one person has the spell available? (send whispers to all of them?)

I think there was one other scenario I'm forgetting but those are the main reasons why I haven't done it yet. Senders whispers during combat won't be a problem. It's just doing it in a way that people would expect and without being complex.

[inthedrops]

Some bug reports are starting to come in which is a good sign.

beta3 pushed:
* Added spell hiding options.
* Fixed errors while in Battlefield (I neglected to account for it). This is the reason for the new build.
* Fixed detection of dead members in party.
* Fixed missing LibSharedMedia reference.

Known Issues:
* When in a Party, player zone and player connection status are not utilized.
* When entering spells, if multiple spellid's match a given name hermes will select the lowest numbered id and provide a warning along with a list of all spellid matches (it tries to be helpful).
* When first entering a raid with many players running Hermes, spells might update a few times while it synchronizes with other players. It should settle down after a few seconds.
* Cross-server battlefield communication not yet supported.
* Dropping raid/party/battlefield may result in spurious "player not in your party" type messages until Hermes has updated all Senders.

[fuzzygeek]

A whispercastesque type function would be useful, with a whisper-first-available ("can I have your %s, please") else message "no %s available; %t's is up in 00 seconds."

I don't know how the BR changes will impact this, but hopefully it won't be too horrible.

[inthedrops]

So far as I can tell Blizzard isn't going to have any mechanism for tracking how many BR's are available during an encounter. I have no doubt that someone will create an addon to fill the gap in the interim. I don't anticipate integrating that support into Hermes it's essential. I'll wait and see what happens.

On the whisper thing; are you saying you want to whisper yourself if after clicking the button it's determined that there isn't one available? I'm still hung up on the whole whisper concept but starting to get some feedback. Unfortunately no ideas sound strong to me yet.

I'm currently researching the ability to "drag out" a spell from the frame and have it show detailed info for that spell. I considered the ability to permanently show and lock the tooltip but I think having a way to show more details for more than one spell is a better idea. I've got the dragging and dropping working. I just haven't decided how to show the information when the button isn't attached to the frame anymore. I REALLY hate timer bars so I'm searching other mods for clever ideas This may never come to be. Or I might make it so you can drag and drop buttons in between frames. We'll see...I just know there are some people with reservations about the whole "button style" approach.

[inthedrops]

Here's a short video I made real quick showing what I mean about dragging and dropping:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLGIM9EaG3I

I really DON'T want to do timer bars, or at least not a timer bar per player, e.g.:

Code: Select all

[S1][PlayerA    |   ]
    [PlayerB      | ]
    [PlayerC       |]

[S2][PlayerD  |     ]
    [PlayerA   |    ]
    [PlayerE     |  ]


I'm trying to find something more compact.

[Fetzie]

Keep in mind that I do not know if any functions that I suggest either exist, or are usable in combat.

regarding scenario 2: the mod could maybe choose a single player (getting pain suppression from two disc priests at the same time isn't particularly useful) and send them the message that "[player that hit the button] needs [spell] from you."

You wouldn't need any message that the spell is on cooldown, as the monitor window tells you if anyone has the spell ready. Clicking the button could message the player with the shortest cooldown duration remaining to cast it as soon as it comes off cooldown (for example, this would be useful for Fear Protection from priests at Onyxia in P3 or a healer asking for an innervate ASAP).

I think this will probably cause the addon to become pretty big regarding memory usage and communication, bubt on the topic of cooldowns such as Innervate, it could maybe have a queue for when there is more than one druid in the raid (it would need to be able to blacklist tanking druids from the queue though).

To continue with this scenario, a priest healer is running low on mana and has blown shadowfiend, mana potion and hymn of hope. They hit the innervate button, informing the moonkin druid that they would appreciate an innervate as soon as possible. The healing paladin has had to dump a lot of mana into the tank because of an unexpected damage burst and needs an innervate. The mod would know that the moonkin druid has had an innervate requested and sends the tell to the restoration druid that the paladin needs an innervate. I have a hunch that this would make the addon use more memory and processor than you might have envisaged, and also do not know how hard this would be to implement. It is also the kind of thing that is sorted out over vt or TS3, but I know that sometimes you need radio silence (or the RL needs to be able to talk uninterrupted).

[fuzzygeek]

I don't think bars are necessary -- it starts getting in the way of what makes this mod so useful, imo (e.g., at-a-glance what is available right the hell now). An option to do something like

+----+ Player A: Avail
|icon| Player B: 3m
+----+ Player C: 15s

Might be useful and more compact that permanent tooltips, and I would probably slot it into my UI where ppower used to be :].

The self-notify would only be necessary if there wasn't at-a-glance info; wouldn't need it with the above display.

Also, I'm being very tank-centric looking at the on-click functionality. From someone with a CD's pov, an on-click to cast on, say, their focus target might be handy, but I imagine most people already have it keybound, so perhaps that doesn't make any sense after all.

[Fetzie]

that sounds rather like what you could have with ORa2 for combat resurrections.

[inthedrops]

I'm extremely tank centric too so I understand. Reviewing all the feedback now.

BTW, just noticed and didn't realize that Soulstones don't work because the cooldown is an item, not a spell. But it looks straight forward enough to add item cooldown tracking too. I'm just trying to find a way to do it that doesn't cause me to change the existing protocol.

[inthedrops]

Pyrea, you pose some interesting concepts. Say you're a tank and you want PS but they're all on cooldown, you click the button anyway (indicating a request for the spell). As soon as the spell becomes available, Hermes sends a whisper to the sender who can fulfill the request....perhaps even warning a few seconds in advance.

I'm not seriously considering this due to the complexity (I can already think of tons of edge cases, such as what happen when two people make a request) but it's a neat concept

I think vent/macro's/etc. should still be the main communication medium. Hermes helps in the sense that it avoids the "Who has XYZ available?" chatter and lets people get right to the point.

Fuzz, thanks for the ideas.

[amh]

On the whisper thing; are you saying you want to whisper yourself if after clicking the button it's determined that there isn't one available? I'm still hung up on the whole whisper concept but starting to get some feedback. Unfortunately no ideas sound strong to me yet.

Not sure if addons can provide the red default error text ("Out of range!" etc), but I prefer that kind of information to show up in the chat frame. You can do this without whispering yourself (and thus skewing your default reply queue). "System" messages that show up for self-only look like this:

Code: Select all

/script DEFAULT_CHAT_FRAME:AddMessage("This is only visible to me, yet it's not a whisper")

[Vrimmel]

What about making a cooldown order list. Make it possible for the raid leader to select an order in the cooldowns. Either show who is next on mouse-over or show the name of the next player below the icon and make it possible to show it on select cooldowns so you don't spam your screen for every ability where an order is unnecessary.

[inthedrops]

Beta5 released, check home page: http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/hermes.aspx

The feature I enjoy most is that as a tank, I can setup a container in some easy to spot place, but leave it empty. And setup another container with all the common stuff I might want to track. And then at any time I can click a button with the middle mouse button to move it from one container to the other. If I setup the "highly visible" container to show a couple tic tacs (see below) it works really well to adjust which cooldowns I monitor on the fly (in combat). I think you guys will like this simple feature.

I put a lot of time into this and tested as best as I could considering. I anticipate a few UI issues here and there with hopefully no more than a handful of serious issues. I'd like to say this release is "rock solid" but honestly, when you use it, you'll see how much Hermes has changed over the last week.

Again, I expect some issues. Hopefully nothing disastrous!

Changes:

* Multiple button containers
* Drag and drop
* Tic Tacs! a.k.a something that sounds more fun than "player name bars".
* Much better defaults for new profiles.
* Much improved support for adding new item cooldowns.
* Added basic slash commands /hermes

Some screenshots...

[inthedrops]

e.g., at-a-glance what is available right the hell now

This was my theme btw It's why I left time info out of the tictacs. At a glance, right the hell now. Timers cause you to mentally process.

[fuzzygeek]

Wow, lots of changes. I look forward to testing this.

The only thing about having time information is that I'll do a mental check 10-15 seconds before I need a CD, especially on a heavily scripted fight like HLK. Knowing something is coming up in 5-10 seconds is just as useful as knowing it's up right NAO. That's probably why I favour numbers over bars.