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

[_Chloe]

Stuck.

[inthedrops]

Update for release 2.0c.

Spell Monitor now tracks Shaman Reincarnation (Spell Monitor is the name of the feature that tracks for non Hermes users)

Also, I don't think I mentioned it but I made a replacement UI that looks a lot more like oRA3, DBM-SpellTimers, RaidCooldowns, etc. It's called LightUI (click for curse link) and here's a sample image, It's extremely simple and easy to configure UI (just your basic spell bars with no bells or whistles):

[Kelaan]

Wow, this looks really slick. I'm kicking myself for not noticing your work on it earlier. I'm going to have to remember to give it a shot, especially now that it doesn't require others to run it. Thanks!

[Fetzie]

It somehow thinks that retribution paladins can use Aura Mastery, I had to manually set the rule for it to check for the talent.

[inthedrops]

I'm proud of my work and think the addon has tremendous value. I will tell you one thing for sure, when I'n not running it (sometimes I test other addons without Hermes running) I really notice it

For example, my two holy/disc priests are constantly changing specs per fight. I never knew if they had PS or GS and I used to say things like " Syc, I need your GS in about 5 seconds" to which he'd respond "I don't have it, I'll give you PS though".

When not testing Hermes, I really only look at these abilities:
Container 1: Guardian Spirit, Pain Suppression, Hand of Sacrifice.
Container 2: Rebirth, Raise Ally, Soulstone, Reincarnation.

I only have container 2 due to raid leader duties.

With Hermes I always know who to ask for a given cooldown. It's a simple matter of looking a bit to the side of my screen, figuring out which of the three has what I want, and calling it out. Takes a whole 2 seconds tops to figure it out.

It depends on your healers a lot, but mine tend to use PS and GS more freely than I used to realize. But rarely did they both use it at the same time (They also run Hermes btw so they know when the other used their cooldown on someone). Long story short, the communication between myself and the two healing priests is rock solid, thanks in part to Hermes.

Our GM *LOVES* Hermes for calling out Battle Resses. That's honestly all she uses it for though (she plays a rogue). She uses button style and has gotten real good at just hovering her mouse over the button, looking at the ordered list, and calling out "X res A, Y res B" etc. It's also nice to know before you start a pull exactly how many people have resses available. For example, with Hermes, we've actually delayed the pull a minute or so to wait for more bresses to go off cooldown. She doesn't even need to ask people the status, she just looks at Hermes.

Another example is our Druids and Shaman. They constantly worry about Innervates, Tranqs, and Mana Tides.

We all use it for different reasons.

I don't know of any DPS who use it that aren't raid leaders but I know some people with cooldowns use it just to help the raid leaders out a bit (this is less important now that Hermes can track non Hermes users)

Last but not least, I use it to keep dibs on people's performance a bit. For example, in Phase 2 of Ascendent Council we had a mage complaining about lack of misdirects on one of the tanks. For me, it was as simple as enabling the "Misdirect" spell in Hermes, and then seeing which Hunters were slow to get their MD's out at the start of the phase. Bam, now I know who can improve.

I was curious if our ret and holy paladins were taking advantage of Divine Protection for fights. Enable Divine Protection in Hermes, and BAM, done deal. Now I know who's using what and when.

Hoenstly, I think most people only care about one or two abilities. That's me 90% of the time. Only occasioanlly do I monitor a few other random spells as mentioned above.

I think Hermes is a useful tool. It's one of those tools that you don't notice it's usefulness until you stop using it.

[inthedrops]

It somehow thinks that retribution paladins can use Aura Mastery, I had to manually set the rule for it to check for the talent.

Yes, this will unfortunately be the case for any ability you want to use Spell Monitor for. This is a unique issue with Hermes because Hermes tries to tell you who has something available. All the other addons out there tell you who just used something. Hopefully you can see why this is an issue unique to Hermes.

I think most people only look at a handful of spells, so the work required on your part to make a Spell Monitor spell "correct" is hopefully limited. And because I literally provide you with all of the talent names, it's really easy to just make a requirment for the talent (sure beats typing it all in manually!)

I'm actually very happy that you were able to realize that adding a Requirement was the proper thing to do! I have been parranoid about how intuitive this feature is and that you were successful makes me happy

You have two options however if you want to avoid the work in the future, as I list in this FAQ:

Q: I only want to see when someone uses a spell. I don't care who has it available. Does Hermes do this?

Yes. There are two ways to do this:
1. For containers using "Bars Style", you can check the "Only show bar when spell is on cooldown" option found under the "Bars Style" section of a container.
2. Download LightUI and use that for the UI instead of the default UI. LightUI only shows abiltiies that are on cooldown.[/list]

So, if you use the LightUI or your container is set to Bars Style (not buttons) and you check that option, then Hermes acts like all the other addons out there will only show something when an ability gets used. This eliminates those "false positives" from an improperly configured spell.

[inthedrops]

By the way, you might wonder why I don't just provide all the spell requirments out of the box (such as Aura Mastery requiring the talent Aura Mastery). There are a couple reasons. The biggest one being Localization. The other reason is that it's a ton of work and I honestly don't want to maintain a list of all this stuff that will change for every patch.

My assumption is that if people are only worried about a small handful of spells, it won't be asking too much of them to configure it themselves.

[Fetzie]

it was definitely easier than configuring the OUF based class timer I use

[Treck]

Is there a way to make this window non interactable?

As its currently taking up a lot of space on the screen, id like it not actually removing a lot of my screen space.

[inthedrops]

Is there a way to make this window non interactable?

As its currently taking up a lot of space on the screen, id like it not actually removing a lot of my screen space.

Yeah I'll lock down dragging with an option in the next release. I assume that's what you're referring to? The buttons and bars are non interactive otherwise (excluding the tooltip). So please let me know which part of all that is the complaint so I'm clear. I tend to scale mine down as needed to make it small.

I'll be pushing one more build before 4.2 with the patch changes (already tested and checked in). And I'll add a feature for that then.

[Koatanga]

I found that in Bars mode I could not click through the unused space of the add-on, which caused some selection issues.

I had the box showing only 4 items, and put it at the top of my screen. Looked fine - there were just the 4 heading up there not taking up much space. I anticipated only 2 entries in any given column because in a 10-man raid you don't have much duplication of class.

However, the minimum height the add-on allowed was still quit large, so there was a lot of unused space below those headers - probably 3-4 cm worth. Since it was clear and since I locked the position of the add-on, I didn't figure it would be a problem.

Well, come the first add-group I had to mark-up, I couldn't select anything through the area the Hermes had reserved. Instead it just showed me detail of empty columns as no one had used any relevant ability yet.

I tilted my view to select the mobs and continue the raid, but at the first pause I just disabled Hermes, sorry to say.

I like the concept a lot, but I just can't have "dead areas" of my screen through which I can't click on players or mobs. DBM is quite imperfect with it's spell cooldowns, but at least when the bars are not shown it's not eliminating any screen area.

[inthedrops]

I found that in Bars mode I could not click through the unused space of the add-on, which caused some selection issues.

I had the box showing only 4 items, and put it at the top of my screen. Looked fine - there were just the 4 heading up there not taking up much space. I anticipated only 2 entries in any given column because in a 10-man raid you don't have much duplication of class.

However, the minimum height the add-on allowed was still quit large, so there was a lot of unused space below those headers - probably 3-4 cm worth. Since it was clear and since I locked the position of the add-on, I didn't figure it would be a problem.

Well, come the first add-group I had to mark-up, I couldn't select anything through the area the Hermes had reserved. Instead it just showed me detail of empty columns as no one had used any relevant ability yet.

I tilted my view to select the mobs and continue the raid, but at the first pause I just disabled Hermes, sorry to say.

I like the concept a lot, but I just can't have "dead areas" of my screen through which I can't click on players or mobs. DBM is quite imperfect with it's spell cooldowns, but at least when the bars are not shown it's not eliminating any screen area.

Oh!! I completely understand what you guys are saying now!

I take for granted since I know exactly what's going on behind the scenes. I'll correct it. It's an extremely simple change.

[inthedrops]

I have a question I'd like your serious opinions on. One complaint I've heard (more than once) is how Hermes forces you to specify the number of bars to show in bars mode, and has dead space for bars if you don't have enough people to fill them.

I'm curious how many people like or dislike that behavior. If you could offer your opinion that would be useful. I try very hard to make Hermes the best it can be.

I am looking at changing the behavior so that the width or height of each ability while in bars mode is set based on how many actual players have the ability instead of how many bars you set. But it'll actually mean a loss in how things automatically "wrap around".

I am pretty sure if I make this change, it'll mean that each container is going to be either horizontal or vertical, and there can ever only be one row or column per container (depending on orientation)

Thanks for your assistance!

[Fetzie]

my interface "lining things up" OCD says keep it the way it is, my interface "don't waste space" OCD says make them condensed. Overall I like it the way it is right now. I have it set up to show a maximum of three bars, as we never have more than three of one class (paladin *cough*) in our 10 man.

[inthedrops]

Thanks, that's very helpful feedback.

There are some technical issues which I need to solve regarding showing the tooltip while still having the abilities be click through. Ended up being a bigger pain than I thought (Blizz API limitations)

I'm also rethinking how to reduce screen space occupied by unused bars.

I would expect a permanent solution just before Firelands.