[WIP] "Nordh's Pet" - Pet tanking addon

Instead of necroing the old thread, I've decided to create a new one.

I want to learn how to program LUA, and thought what better way to do it than something to help the hunter tanking community? It's not something that will happen over night, but I plan on slowly adding bits and pieces here and there.

What I do need are some people to Beta-test the addon, and to come up with what need to be implemented.

List of utilities

(X) Low pet HP warning
(X) Mend Pet notifier
( ) Pet CD manager
( ) GUI
( ) Threat-"SCT"
( ) Auto-set skull to pet target

Change Log:

03-01-10:
v0.1.1a
http://www.nightcrew.se/wow/NordhsPet-1_0_1a.rar
Refined a bit of code.

Use /npet 1-100 to set pet %HP limit.

Fixed: Known bug: /npet [yes/no] doesn't work. Supposed to turn on/off warnings.



01-01-10:
v0.1.0a
* Pet low HP warning with basic settings. /npet <percentage> to set the HP limit on when to warn that the pet has low HP. Warns once and resets when pet gets above the limit again.
* Warns once when pet doesn't have Mend Pet and pet HP changes. Use Mend Pet to reset warning. Should only warn if pet HP is not full.

List of improvements to be done to already existing code:

* Settings saved between sessions.
* Where / how to warn.
* Mend Pet HP warning limit

Im so down to test this its not even funny! Id be glad to help.

ed

I will notify you when I am ready to release a beta here. It's not that far off, I just want a very simple GUI settings window and variables to be saved between sessions first.

And don't expect any miracle addon to begin with. Beta testing isn't always fun It's more so you can see if there are any bugs, and to say "I wish I had the option to do this, now that would be awesome!"

Thats cool, I tried to mod a old tank addon with the wow ui creator didnt work at all lol. I wanted to see if I could make it like tank buddy it says when you tank uses last stand or shield wall or if a growl is missed. I figured it could be modded for our growls our last stand even taunt somthing to make it easier for people to see what our omen tells us (those who use it for tanking cause I cant run with out it.)

Ed

This sounds fantastic. Personally I'd love if you could figure out how to get accurate threat data if the game broadcasts how much threat is done per ability, so that we could get an accurate formula for threat from growl and thunderstomp. I'd definitely save attempting to do this for a later release though if you have any plans on trying it.

Durante, the game already has its own threat meter, and Omen uses that to calculate threat, so it's not guestimated any longer. I love Omen personally and don't see the use to replace it with something that does the same job.

That said, it shouldn't be impossible to make a SCT for threat instead of damage. It's a bit away on the horizon, but I'll add it to the wishlist.

Nordh wrote:Durante, the game already has its own threat meter, and Omen uses that to calculate threat, so it's not guestimated any longer. I love Omen personally and don't see the use to replace it with something that does the same job.

That said, it shouldn't be impossible to make a SCT for threat instead of damage. It's a bit away on the horizon, but I'll add it to the wishlist.

I know, I use Omen myself, I was just not sure if the game's threat meter only displays the current total threat which Omen shows, or if its possible to see how much threat each individual attack/spell generated.

Well, each attack generates an amount of threat that is broadcast to the threatmeter. It should be "easy" to monitor the amount each attack does.

I'm attaching an alpha version, that I've actually been using for raids. Shows when pet needs heals, which is nice ^^ Nothing fancy or anything.

As a hunter-tank's healer, I wish to offer my two cents with regard to the pet health warning: It's largely useless. In my experience, if you're not healing the pet, and it gets below any half-decent percentage, say, 70%, and a heal is not on the way already, there's a very high chance that pet is going down. Seeing that in many encounters, such as H-Gundrak's last boss, or any raid, even a single blow to the pet will knock it below 70%, well, the low health warning makes mere spam and encourages panic in the group.

Perhaps healing classes with more instant heal/protect spells like priests will get something out of it. I don't know.

Personally I'd see such a warning as a good way to show when you need to use panic buttons such as Guardian Spirit, Lay on Hands, Last Stand, Cower, Shell Shield and the likes. And of course, 70% is nothing. Most tanks fluctuate below 70%... It's the 20% limit that's more interesting when tanking. And a tank pet with 35K HP shouldn't wander down below that too often.

For testing purposes, the limit is at default at 90%, and needs to be reset at each relog. But when raiding as dps, I find a high value to be quite good. Then you have time to react and pop a mend pet before it goes down too far.

Inspired by dps often pulling aggro and attacking the wrong target, my first suggestion for the hunter tank addon is a pet target change notification and raid-marking. Probably macro-able, really.

That is my good buddy and guildmate who has not only supported my efforts but even respeced to holy to help! He (other then a wife or 2 ) has maybe the best forsite on how it is to heal a pet.

So far he and I have ran and cleared H Nexus, H UK, H Gundrak, H Hol, H Ok, H An, H VH, H Toc (5 man) and Ot OS10.

Im sure theres more but I cant remember lol.

ed

Admiral, the dps pulling aggro is often the ones not caring about raid markers ^^ I'm currently leveling a druid tank to get a normal tanks point of view on things, and that's one thing I've noticed.

It's a decent suggestion, how would you like to handle it? Auto-swap skull to your pets target? I personally put up a skull when I'm tanking, but if I see something get lose, or am just high enough on threat, I tend to switch target a lot to see how my threat it on the side mobs, even if it doesn't mean a new target has to be killed. Having it automated would confuse the dps too much I believe.

I'd strongly recommend any tank, be it hunter or otherwise to have a hot-key for at least skull.

As a paladin tank, I rarely have any need to mark trash (although I do have marks set for numpad 1-. Since it is most often guildies that run with Bigfootzz and I, I'd like (perhaps naively) to believe they care about the raid markers. Rather, since I don't use them, I suspect I've trained them to attack whatever they please, and they're going against habit.

A normal tank can, and often must switch targets frequently to check the threat on each. To have an addon move skull to his target each time would indeed cause mass confusion. A hunter tank, however, has the advantage of not needing to change the pet/tank's target to check threat. So I do not believe there will be a confusion issue when it comes to auto-swapping skull to the pet's target as you correctly surmised. Whereas Bigfootzz usually marks before a pull, surprise aggro understandably goes without marks when it happens. The sooner a kill order (even if only of one at a time w/o advance notice) can be established, the better. Plus it can lower the downtime between simple pulls if marking can be automated. (Oh, the number of missile barrages my mage has missed out on for the sake of a kill order . . .)

If under these conditions a dps still manages to take a non-skull off the tank, I'm inclined to suggest my policy: death is a fitting feedback mechanism for somebody that isn't doing what they're supposed to do.

Just quickly, to prevent any misunderstanding, I am not a hunter tank, nor do I aspire to be one. That'd be too much work to be worth it to me. Instead, I use my prot/holy paladin and arcane mage to support Bigfootzz in any way I can.

If nothing else, those who don't like it auto-swapping can just turn the feature off in the settings (whenever I make the GUI )

First of all, I want to say that this project is not dead. I've been changing jobs and become an officer in the guild I joined a few months ago. ^^ I've also been testing the addon from a dps point of view and I know of a few things that I need to fix.

I've also been checking for addons that can teach me the knowledge that I need to make things work properly. At the moment I'm a bit wary about implementing too many variables without having good ground work.

There are two things that are on my prio list, GUI options and settings saved between sessions.

Whenever you feel the addon is ready for testing, I'll be glad to help do that.

The download link is in the second post.

How do you get it to install right? I put it in my add on folder but wow doesnt read it...am i missing somthing?

ed

any updates on this? I tried to use what was already here but I never got it to load.

ed