If you have to optimize your raid's DPS after covering the buffs/debuffs, then Blizzard has done something wrong.

It isn't about 'having' to optimize. It is about wanting to know what extra classes to recruit to fill out a roster. I know some classes are really struggling right now and some are doing very well, but I don't know a lot of the middle ones and where they stand.

Very nice work, one suggestion I have:

The replenishment counter notwithstanding, I would suggest a two stage coloring of how Replenishment is implemented (similar to how other buffs are handled).

-Green: "No. of mana users in raid" < "10 * No. of Replenishment providers"
-Yellow: "No. of mana users in raid" > "10 * No. of Replenishment providers"


Also things that have been mentioned before:

-Judgement of Light, which is becoming immensely powerful/useful.
-Blessing of Wisdom: Imp for Holy, non-imp for Prot/Ret

If Blizzard does their job well and arrives at their stated intent, you'd best optimise the raid by bringing the 'best* players'. Irrespective of their class.

(*ie: People that don't die in fire, people that have 100% attendance, people that always flask/pot up etc - not merely the highest DPS class as there should not be one.)

Given that replenishment is only given to the 10 players with the lowest mana, having more than one replenishment provider doesn't actually help right now.

Lowest mana is not a constant.

I think you're trying to do go about this the wrong way. Instead of looking at the tool as something to tell you what to fill those spots with, use the tool to represent getting all your spots filled with whatever characters your guildies want to play, then from there establishing who should be casting which buffs:

"Hey Retpaladinguy, go ahead and skip buffing BOM, since Armswarriordude has Commanding Presence"
"Jackthewarlock, I need you to bring out your Imp though, since you did spec for a talented Blood Pact"

A lot of changes based on feedback. I’m especially interested in feedback on the new highlighting features. I feel that it’s a decent compromise between showing too little and causing annoyance for the user. I tried out what some of you asked for, adding additional tooltips on the specs or even inside the groups and it’s too much really, especially for people who don’t need the info.
Perhaps a good idea but won’t that lead to inconsistencies which may be worse than the value it adds? I added an undocumented change to this release of RC as an example, Curse of the Elements, which depending on if an Affliction Warlock is in the raid shows as weak or not. Wouldn’t a better approach be to mark categories that are only enabled by weak abilities as yellow or in another color? Or should both be done?

Sorry, like I said in my first post I will never support IE6. I understand that it sucks for some of you trapped at work or whatnot with no choice. The browser is one of the biggest, if not the biggest, attack surface exposed by regular users. Keeping it updated is really important for your security. RC works just fine in the latest version of IE7 and IE8 (although the JavaScript performance is a joke).

I’m skeptical about going into that detail since in every case except the simplest one it gets really messy. Imagine the chain effects with blessings, totems, Warlock pets and Warrior shouts. You’d want the feature to be completely accurate and I don’t think I can do that with the level of uncertainty that’s part of the tool.

This is a very interesting suggestion on how to tackle the fact that the armory is inherently inaccurate at times. When clicking on a link to enable this feature one could simply ask for guild name, realm and region. After that RC could pull the guild list of names (only one query so Bibi won’t hate me, or do this client-side in JavaScript) and provide simple name-completion based on the class of the spec you’re changing name on.

Will never happen with RC, sounds like a completely different tool to me (someone create it, sounds cool).

On the subject of adding additional abilities and categories
While it’s important that RC is accurate it’s also important to avoid bloating the tool with every minuscule ability in WoW. The main change that made me create RC was the introduction of buff and debuff categories, this is the main thing people will want to wrap their heads around come WotLK. Most classes still bring the same abilities as before. If RC can help you create a raid that’s 90% as efficient as the most optimized raid there is from a buff and debuff standpoint that’s good enough. The last 10% is what we here on EJ among other things spend countless hours theorycrafting about, most people couldn’t care less about it. In TBC the devil was in the details when it came to raid performance, in WotLK that’s supposedly much less the case.

I don’t mind adding minor abilities (like Grace) if they’re already in a specific category with at least one other ability. I also feel that mana regeneration abilities should be an exception, seeing as how Blizzard seems to want to make mana management a big deal for casters. Examples of what I consider to be abilities not important enough to be in RC are Stoneskin Totem, LotP (healing part), Healing Stream Totem, Blood Aura (healing part), Amplify Magic, Dampen Magic, Disarm abilities, Interrupts (a lot of specs have them) and Devotion Aura (armor part).

In essence I want to be careful when adding new categories but for every category in RC we should list every ability that goes into that category.

Appreciate all the feedback and ideas.

Right now Aimed Shot is needed in order to get the Mortal Shots talent. However in 3.0, Mortal Shots isn't linked to Aimed Shot anymore and hunters are finding it hard to justify getting Aimed Shot in a PvE build. Granted that they made it instant cast and it no longer resets your Auto Shot, but as it stands right now Aimed Shot appears to be on the out in any PvE build come 3.0.

Any thoughts about adding abilities such as "threat missdirection" (hunter, rogue) and "threat reduction" (paladin, warrior)?

Thanks for the update. One more thing that came up for the paladin class:

Improved Devotion Aura:

There really is no way you'll find a PvE specced Ret paladin with Improved Devotion Aura, without sacrificing too many required spec-defining talents. This should be removed.

This is such a great tool - keep up that project.

I would like to make a suggestion:

A Debuff counter. It would be great to see how many debuff slots my Raidcomp needs. Optionally with a mouseover to see how many debuff slots are used by a particular class.

It would be easy to add a count for number of debuffs assuming I knew the number of potential debuffs provided by each spec (and how many debuffs a second player of the same spec would add). Some things aren't very clear to me though when it comes to debuffs in WotLK. I remember there being some talk about increasing the cap for WotLK. What's the cap in the beta now? How do buffs / debuffs in the same category behave? What if you reach the cap, how do debuffs get knocked of and in what order? Would a weak version of a debuff get knocked of first if a stronger debuff in the same category was on the target?

I like the highlight-over feature, it's very nice. I found a small bug though, when you swap classes between groups by dragging and dropping one onto the other they no longer highlight the buffs/debuffs they give on the buff list when mousing over them. The issue is resolved by adding a new character of any class/spec to the raid, at that point the previously non-functioning characters all start working properly again.

Oops, forgot to add that. Fixed now.

Edit: or not. Going to have to look into this a bit more.

Edit again: or maybe I did fix it! The cache took a long time to update at the host. Please tell me if you experience problems with this again.

Excellent tool Nopher, thank you!

I have an ability for you to add under the Buffs->Attack Power section.

Furious Howl - Spell - World of Warcraft

A pet ability that adds [pet level *2]-2 Attack Power to party/raid members. Has a 10 second cooldown and lasts 10 seconds. This means that it adds 158 attack power to the raid at almost 100% uptime (at level 80).

As of the latest ptr/beta build, this does not stack with Blessing of Might. I did not test Battle Shout, but I think it is safe to assume it is included.

Since this attack power gain is clearly lower than both BoM and BS it would need a [w] flag. But I still feel the gain is high enough to warrant it being listed.

This is purely an aesthetic suggestion and may not apply to everyone, but maybe have more contrasting colors for when when you mouseover things. The classes that apply a certain buff for example don't really stand out all that much. Otherwise this is a great tool that I've already used quite a bit, thanks for the hard work!

I still don't get why mana spring totem and Blessing of Wisdom isn't in the same category...

Because they are different. Mana spring only applies to the party but stacks with multiple shaman.

I see, well that explains it. Sounds kind of weird though, since almost all totems are raidwide.

This means that every raid needs to bring 2-3 paladins in order to get kings, wisdom, and possibly sanctuary... Not sure why they did it like that if they're trying to get away from "unreplacable" classes. It seemed so perfect to pair wisdom and mana spring since they are both 50 mp5 (at 70). Maybe they'll do it like that in the future but the raidcomp should obviously reflect the current state.

Slightly off-topic: Does the mana regen from water elemental stack with replenishment and wisdom/totem?

I think the buff/debuff consolidation still needs some polishing. Paladins, Priests, Shaman & Druids still have unique buffs while Mages still have a unique debuff. The disparity is quite evident while using RaidComp.

E: To answer your question, its supposed to stack with all mana regen effects.

You have improved FF as a maybe for balance druids, but regular FF as an always. This is actually sort of backwards.

With the talent iFF giving crit on any FF applied a lot of balance druids will have the talent, but very few will ever cast it as it's a huge nerf to their casting rotations to apply it every 40 seconds.

I'd classify all Faerie Fire debuffs as maybe with a balance druid, not just the improved part, as it's better overall for a feral to do FF, (they are waiting on rage/energy anyway) and a shadow priest to use misery (it's a 100% uptime proc.) Although it is of course posible for the balance druid to cover it.