Fizwidget

In the fantasy world I live in, I believe this is possible, let me toss a few braincells out there and see what we can get:

From Curse's Dotimer page:

Dotimer uses every single scrap of info available to seperate the mobs, including raid icons, name, level and even gender. My DoTs, except for CoA always tic for approximately the same amount, it should be possible to use Threat-1.0 and the same info that DoTimer gathers to assign DoT ticks to targets based on where the threat is expected to go. You could get damage information from a DrDamage dependency perhaps? or just capture the first tick?

For example, I cast Corruption on Serpentshrine Trashmob(X) and Serpentshrine Trashmob(Skull). It should be possible to buffer for ("expect") those DoT tics to happen, or just ignore them entirely and set a ThreatOverTime effect for that target. I'll stipulate that the DoT's damage will change over time as modifiers like Misery and Shadow Weaving stck up, but surely its better to be pretty damn close than to just not try to track targets due to DoTs being wonky.

It should be possible (again, perhaps this is a fantasy world) to track what spells I'm casting on which targets, and report that to differentiate which raid symbol I just cast Shadowbolt on. Also, it should be possible to determine and report which raid symbol I just Dotted. And it may or may not be possible for me to create a ThreatOverTime call to the aggro table of the mob I cast on, while the parser eats/ignores DoT tics coming in for myself.

So I guess the major question is, is it at all possible to use Threat-1.0 to assign arbitrary threat, perhaps based on a timer? And second, is all that crazy stuff I mentioned above a library issue, or a front-end issue as it stands now?

 

◊ Praetorian

Would it be helpful to go over the relevant threat mechanics for the different fights in TBC? Pre-TBC compatibility seems fairly irrelevant for the effort required (modeling 4H threat and such).

Karazhan:
Attumen -- Wipe threat on the transition to phase 3
Moroes -- N/A
Maiden -- N/A
Opera -- Nothing for BBW; Nothing for Oz; Clear R&J threat going into Phase 3.
Nightbane -- Reset Nightbane threat when he stops casting Smoking Blast and prepares to land.
Curator -- N/A
Aran -- N/A
Illhoof -- Clear Kil'rek threat when he dies or is resummoned.
Netherspite -- Clear Netherspite threat when banish phase ends.
Prince -- N/A

Gruul's Lair:
Maulgar -- I believe Kiggler's AoE knockback is a full aggro wipe. (Confirm?)
Gruul -- N/A

Magtheridon: N/A

SSC:
Hydross -- Clear Hydross threat on transition; clear add threat on transition.
Lurker -- N/A
Morogrim -- N/A
Karathress -- N/A
Leotheras -- Clear Leotheras threat when Whirlwind fades from Leo; clear Leotheras threat when he yells for demon transformation or 15% split.
Vashj -- N/A (though clearing threat on all Striders when one dies would probably be helpful, if imprecise -- otherwise if you have a new Strider spawning just as the old one dies, you'll have a completely wrong picture of threat on all of them after the first... same with Elites I suppose)

TK:
Al'ar -- Clear threat on P1-->P2 transition. Threat is preserved thereafter.
Void Reaver -- Knock Away is -33.3% aggro (right?)
Solarian -- Reset aggro on adds every teleport (?)
Kael'Thas -- Reset aggro on the four council members when he yells to begin Phase 3. Reset aggro on Phoenix when he casts a new one.

Anything else I've forgotten or gotten wrong?

 

• Erongg

Lurker keeps threat after submerge? Never knew that. As for Void Reaver, some Flying Hellfish guys claimed it was -25%.

Finite Simple Group of Order Two
Basshunter - Dota
Basshunter - Boten Anna
Richard Dawkins - The God Delusion

 

◊ Malan

Whats the new interface look like that everyone above is raving about?

@Gurg - I thought Kiggler was only a partial wipe, 50% or so?

Vyktianity already has over 75 billion followers. The first verse in his book "Gift of the Wild" is "In the beginning Vyk cast lifebloom and then maul."

 

Crazytrucker

Void Reaver is a 25% aggro reduction on knock back from reading various threads here.

I'm unsure of the Al'ar reset also. From what I experienced last night, phase 1 keeps track of threat but al'ar acts like a frost nova'd mob. It hits the highest threat in range. Phase 2 I believe the threat is not wiped but instead it is no longer frost nova'd. We had a tank taunt at 1% oh phase 1 with warlocks soul shattering and mages going invisible and for phase 2 it went to the tank. Just what I've seen more testing is probably needed.

 

Poj

Is this confirmed? In 2 previous kills, the 2 locks had DoTs still ticking when Romeo went down, and when R&J respawned, he headed right to Lock1, killed him, then to Lock2, then onto the tank who was tanking him in the Romeo only face.

 

◊ Praetorian

Yeah, I wasn't sure of the numbers on VR -- all I knew is that KTM had it wrong and so we basically ignore KTM for that fight.

As for Al'ar/R&J, yes, there is definitely a threat reset, but this is a common behavior in mobs that "die" and then are revived. DoTs will remain on them, and while aggro is wiped, ticking DoTs can continue to accrue threat on the cleared table, which carries over once the mob pops back up.

On Al'ar we stop DoTs at 10% or so for this reason -- if he dies with DoTs on him, he will go straight for a warlock after his Rebirth, every single time. If he doesn't, he spawns with pretty much clean aggro and one misdirection shot will send him to the tank.

It's got to be a lot more than that. We use a bear to melee tank Kiggler in a corner, and when Kiggler does his knockback, maybe 40 seconds into the fight, Kiggler will run for a healer 100% of the time. There is no way in hell that heal aggro, split among Maulgar/Krosh/Kiggler/Blindeye/Olm/felstalker(s), is going to come anywhere remotely close to even 50% of the aggro a druid has generated during that time. Yet I have never, ever seen him knockback the druid tank and not run for a healer.

 

• Apate

I also thought that it was partial, but that is based on not-remotely-enough face time in Gruuls.

See you, auntie.
"You don't need a machine to make a rainbow. For rainbows are made of happy thoughts, and dreams, and chocolate unicorns, and gumdrops, and licorice sunsets, and fuzzy gumdrop bears, and sugar-coated chocolate gumdrop land."

Originally Posted by DeeNogger I am coming for you Apate.

 

◊ Malan

We use hunters to tank Kiggler, usually just 2 (used an elemental shaman and a hunter last week), so my observation was based on that setup. The hunters said they seem to flip-flop aggro between each other because of the blasts so I took that to indicate it was a partial reset.

Vyktianity already has over 75 billion followers. The first verse in his book "Gift of the Wild" is "In the beginning Vyk cast lifebloom and then maul."

 

◊ Praetorian

Er, are you sure they aren't "flip-flopping" aggro because one gets poly'd, he switches to the other, etc? Anyway, I suppose it wouldn't be hard to test, but it's also hardly crucial for a first-release version. Stuff like Hydross and Leotheras are the really crucial ones.

It'd also be nice to have a way for a leader/assist to manually clear all threat so we can retain functionality on new bosses or in other situations where the automation may not be perfect.

 

◊ Ulfgar

It's particularly great when he runs to a healer halfway across the room and when I go back to get him I run into Krosh's blastwave radius...

For this reason we use a hunter in combination with me as a tank, so that he goes for the hunter in a controllable position. But yeah, definitely more than a partial aggro wipe, and I've resisted the arcane explosion and still had him run away.

 

◊ Malan

Ooh could be that, I forgot that he does that too. I'm normally "tanking" Blindeye and not paying attention to the others as long as all is well.

Vyktianity already has over 75 billion followers. The first verse in his book "Gift of the Wild" is "In the beginning Vyk cast lifebloom and then maul."

 

Antiarc

I'll bet DoTimer breaks when you use a focus to cast a DOT, not that you'd really ever do that

Basically, it comes down to "level, sex, and raid icon information are not available in the combat log" which means really bad juju trying to distinguish between same-name mobs for threat, when the vast majority of classes will be doing simultaneous damage to multiple mobs.

This is a bad idea for the following reasons:

- Changing debuffs on the target changes the threat per tick of DOTs
- Resisted or partially resisted ticks cause less threat than full ticks
- Mobs that cleanse debuffs (think Moroes adds) would not let the debuff run its full course, invalidating threat-over-time assumptions.
- Mobs that have vulnerability/damage reduction would alter the damage done, thereby altering the threat
- There's still no good way to separate threat for multi-target direct damage (multishot, volley, blade flurry, cleave, sweeping strikes, hellfire, rain of fire, blizzard, arcane explosion, frost nova, cone of cold, blast wave, swipe, damage totems...the list goes on.), meaning you'd have to share all damage done across mobs of the same name, basically invalidating those threat numbers anyway.

 

Antiarc

I'd like pre-TBC compatibility eventually, but I'm not going to lose sleep over it right now

I have Attumen, Illhoof, Nightbane done in Kara. Need to do RJ and Netherspite. Both should be trivial.

If we can confirm that Kiggler's AoE knockback is a full aggro wipe, I should be able to implement that trivially.

Magtheridon: I'm wiping threat on Mag on the release, so that you don't have global (healing/gain) threat on him to begin with.

Hydross - Done in theory, my guild hasn't started SSC yet so I can't say for sure. Should start in the next couple of weeks though. Wipes spawn threat on each phase transition so that going into the spawns you have a clean threat slate to work from, rather than preserving the threat tables from the previous phase.

Leotheras - Done in theory, shieldb from #wowace did this one for me. I've had a couple people say it mostly works; I've made changes since then that should tighten it up and preserve separate threat wipes for Leotheras/Shadow

Vashj - No module right now. Should be simple enough to implement a threat clear on Striders as you say. I don't know the fight at all, though, so I'd like if someone with some Lua chops could take a look at the existing modules and put one together. I'm available in #wowace on irc.freenode.net for realtime question-and-answer.

I don't know TK fights at all, so I haven't done any modules for them yet. However, it looks like they should all be trivial to implement.

The API method exists, and can be invoked from the chatbox with:

It requires leader/assistant, and will probably be implemented in various UIs at some point, but you can use a macro with the above to do the job in the meantime. It's more of a sledgehammer than the automated methods since it basically just requests that everyone wipe all their tables, while the individual mob threat clears specifically preserve global threat while executing a threat reset on a single mob, but it'll do the trick in a pinch.

 

Beerbaron

slightly off the main topic, but not worthy of a new topic:
i've been trying to figure out netherspites aggro. we use a single tank for an entire portal phase on the red beam (he dodges in and out of the beam to keep his life up). so when the banish phase begins, aggro is not reset? at first we tried to all stay in melee range for the banish phase to make it easier to dodge the breaths, but my shadow priest (doing no dps at all in the banish phase) would acquire aggro about 3-5 seconds into the phase and take his melee dmg (near insta-death). i eventually had to stay outside melee range and dodge the breaths out there. netherspite would still turn and face me (pretty sure it was not to breath, but in a desire to claw me to death, but he didn't move in that phase). can anyone elaborate on what I'm seeing? thanks. (is the red beam's effect still 'taunting' netherspite during those first seconds of the banish phase?)

for maulgar, kiggler's knockback is definitely not a full aggro wipe. i've gotten hit by it on occasion a minute or more into the encounter and able to get aggro back when the other hunter is poly'd 5 seconds later. i'm not sure what % it is.. but I'd say it can't be more than 80%, otherwise a healer would have gotten aggro.

 

◊ Kalman

DotDotDot doesn't break when you focus-cast, but it does break when you mouseover cast.

But yes, there is *no* way to guarantee that you can correctly tell which mob a spell was cast on, even with raidicons. If they can't be distinguished via combat log messages, then they're not really going to be distinguished by a threat parser (even if DoT timers can distinguish, but that's a different subject).

http://mmorchive.net

The WoW forums, explained:

 

heel

Doomwalker - Reset aggro on overrun.
Al'ar - Threat is absolutely, positively not cleared on the transition to phase two.
Void Reaver - As mentioned, Knockaway is a 25% aggro drop.
Karathress - Clear hunter pet threat on resummon.
Vashj - Not sure of the specific reason, but KTM grossly inflates the threat of anyone who gets Static Charge. Fixing this would be good.
Supremus - Reset aggro at the end of the kite stage.

Not specific to any boss, but still a big issue: there are many fights with tauntable bosses, and KTM just plain doesn't register the taunt on most (all?) of them. It would be nice if this mod could accurately track taunts.

 

◊ Praetorian

It counts damage done to other players as threat-generating, which is clearly a bad thing, and Threat 1.0 by its basic framework would be free from this issue I'd think.

Are you sure about Al'ar? I guess we can test it further this week.

 

• Erongg

Maybe the target isn't set specifically to Vashj and the static charge people are doing damage to those around them. You'd just need to set the target properly to fix that.

Edit: Is all PvP damage counted as threat, even when the target is set?

Finite Simple Group of Order Two
Basshunter - Dota
Basshunter - Boten Anna
Richard Dawkins - The God Delusion

 

• Chicken

I think this is a generic problem KTM has with players having a debuff inflict damage to other players (That is, I've sen my threat go insane when I got Overload and our melee DPS didn't move away in Karazhan during Arcane Watchmen pulls)

That'd probably just be handled by (usually) ignoring damage inflicted to other players; though in case Blizzard ever listens to one of the myriad of 'Hey let's turn one of our random raid members into the boss!' ideas there should probably be some kind of API method to allow a specific boss module to overwrite this behavior.

buff /bʌf/ Pronunciation[buhf]
–verb (used with object)
- to reduce or deaden the force of

 

◊ Sarutobi