Chemoshvt

Any have any knowledge of a decent APM tracking type mod to be used in game? I did some searching in this forum and out and haven't really come up with anything. I'd be interested in seeing what the APM is on raids for certain classes.

I was thinking something that works similar to DOTA where you'd type -apm and it would give you XXX.XX for all the players in the game, if anyone is familiar with it.

 

Roogle

I don't think such an addon would be accurate since a lot of people do spam their hotkeys throughout global cooldown.

 

Thuz

I agree Roogle, I reckon I have about 5-7 spams on my buttons per second playing Rogue in raids, and thus the APM would rather be "global cooldowns initiated per minute".

 

sp00n

Could this be worked around by an "abilities per minute" mod?
I.e. not key pressed, but actually activated abilities.

Of course this this would be more difficult to program and most likely also more power consuming.

Uh, I somewhat doubt that. Unless you have a heavily trained Summer Games™ finger (), I'd be more like 2-3 max.
Plus this is only when you have enough energy available, you don't smash your SS button when you're at 0 energy, do you?

Anyway, it could be quite interesting to see a comparision for the different classes, and to see a comparision of how many abalities these classes actually used.

 

Thuz

Well, I missed the words "at most" in that line, and I see now that it may be somewhat high if read without those words. But yes, I do actually smash my Backstab button when I have 0 energy. In fact, I never watch my energy, and I basically spam my buttons for the entire evening, as far as I am in a position to deal damage. I should make an addon that counts how many times I smash the buttons during a night of raiding.

And back to the topic, I believe it would be possible to do what you suggest, sp00n, with the new combat log system. I haven't checked it, though.

 

Aranan

I'm sure everyone's heard That Guy on Vent who has a constant rapidfire keypress sound going on anytime he speaks.

 

koaschten

Recount already tracks "Activity". It should reflect Abilities triggered and logged to the combatlog.

 

◊ manly

I can't imagine the numbers I would get thanks to my G15.

Log on with different model:
1- Create a character of the desired model. Log on/off.
2- At character selection screen, select your actual character; mouseover the new, desired model character, and hold down left click; hit enter and release left click at the same time.
bug Arcane Potency only applies to the first Arcane Missile bolt.

 

Prinsesa

I don't see this as being particularly useful.

1. If you just record keystrokes, then That Guy Who Mashes His Keyboard is going to have an APM in high hundreds from humping the Mortal Strike key like he was trying to get it pregnant.

2. If you record actual abilities used, then you also have to establish baseline performance figures for each spec of each class. That is, with a GCD of 1.5s, there's an upper limit of about 40 APM (a little more with clickies, pots, etc.) but no class except maybe Tanking Warriors in a high-damage-endless-rage situation is going to manage all 40 GCDs in one minute.

In fact, some classes can't do that by virtue of how their class plays - once a Fire Mage has Imp. Scorch up, he'll only average around 20-25 APM from spamming Fireball every 3.0 seconds and refreshing Scorch every now and then.

20 APM is way below what you might get from an Elemental Shaman chaining 2.0s Lightning Bolts, but both classes are still doing as much as can be expected of them.

3. Even if you established an "expected APM" figure for a given class, the number you might still wouldn't mean anything useful unless you took a real good look at what he was actually using the APM on.

40 APM from a Warrior? Cool! Except he's spamming Sunder Armor and nothing else.

60+ APM from a Rogue? Awesome! Except he's spamming Shiv with a 1.30 OH.

"We do want Sanctuary to be the tanking seal"

- Ghostcrawler

 

wilfan

1. and 2. are obvious and 3. is a non-issue, as this is always done when reviewing logs.

Personally, while I'm reviewing our WWS stats, I suspect a lot of members are just not "pressing the buttons", either due to lag, poor reflexes, misplaced mana conservation or just general retardation. While I can generally estimate APM for for some classes, AE, DoTs and chained abilites make this impossible for shamans and warlocks which is what interests me the most currently.

Oh, and my DPS increased a bit, while proper kick timing and general enjoyment of the game went up by a magnitude when I stopped spamming on my rogue.

 

rayijin

This may be a bit offtopic, but a rogue is about the only class where not mashing doesn't impact your dps as much, because your limitation is energy, not GCDs or casts (hi 1 sec gcd!).

For just about every class, the goal is to have as little time between actions. Having 6 seconds instead of 6.1 or 6.2 seconds between every bloodthirst makes a difference, and the easiest/most reliable way to get it is to mash. This is most true for nuke-spamming casters (2.5 sec vs 2.7 sec per bolt = 7-8% dps loss).

Button mashing has always been the secret to topping a meter for me.

On-topic: The reason these meters are interesting is because they do show you something. Obviously, the exact method of the meter's usage, the role the player is playing it, what mouse movement/target selection is needed, etc. all have to be taken into account.

But if you DO take all these things into account, you can at least see a person's playstyle. Back when I was into WC3, watching replays and reading strats, "actions per minute" was an interesting measure sometimes used. Some good players were in the 200-300 range, others, around 80. Both could work and both tell you something.

Information is power.

 

• LodeRunner

I knew it was only a matter of time before someone took that stupid gauge that became so popular in Warcraft 3 and tried to apply it to WoW. I envision a bleak future, where not only do trade channel BG PUGs require a certain amount of resilience, but also a certain APM.

LF 2 HEALER EOTS PREMADE MUST HAVE 300+ RES AND 275+ APM PST

 

Prinsesa

The thing is, if you're going to go through logs and examine what he did every step of the way anyway, then the APM didn't really tell you anything.

If I look at a WWS for a Warlock and see nothing but Shadowbolts and Curses of Doom and a reported DPS of 2000+, I don't have to go through his log anymore and check if he did anything wrong, because the breakdown already tells me all that I need.

If I look at a Warlock's APM and see some figure of 30-40, I still have to go through and look at what he spent those actions on, so the APM figure in itself didn't tell me anything. Yes, the player can PRES BUTAN, but I don't know if it's the right ones.

This is exactly what I'm talking about - a WC3 player with 300 APM could very well be spamming move orders on a single Ghoul to artificially inflate it, while a different player with only 80 APM could win just as effectively with less numerous, more intelligent commands.

If both players can win regardless of their APM, then the APM figure is meaningless and you have to examine something else to tell you what those players are doing that contributes to their win.

QFT. APM was never a good metric to go by in WC3 and I certainly don't think it will be in WOW.

"We do want Sanctuary to be the tanking seal"

- Ghostcrawler

 

wilfan

First, PRES BUTAN is a skill missing from a vast majority of players at the low end. It's a given for experienced raiders, but surprisingly missing from a lot of first time raiders. Second, with mana becoming more and more a non-issue, GCD and cast time has become the real limiter. So, spamming well matters.

As I said, I can see what someone did fine from WWS if that's a class w/o DoTs and chain spells, as WWS hits+misses correspond to actions.

Le'ts continue with the warlock example. I wanted to evaluate an affliction warlock once. Yes, such beasts are still out there, such as when you're recruiting undergeared people. He had crap DPS and low SB count. Now, was he capped by his gear or by the encounter or did he just suck at reapplying DoTs w/o clipping and throwing bolts in between? There was no other affliction warlock on the same run, so I couldn't benchmark him. No, comparing people in different runs doesn't work.

If it's gear, his APM should be somewhere around 30 APM, depending on the amount of targets and his corruption cast time. If he got repeatedly confused and canceled spells mid cast or was moving w/o reapplying instants or just froze and stood there, his APM should be much lower, say around 10-20.

Even clearer example is intensive shaman raid healing. You're virtually spamming CH non-stop. But you can't see number of CH casts from WWS or any other mods I'm aware of. CH doesn't always chain two times, so I can't know if shaman with a low number of CH hits in WWS was just unlucky with chaning (or perhaps raid was too spread out) or if he doesn't know how to spam ("press the button a bit before Quartz bar enters red part").

As you can see, I don't care much about APM ratio itself. It has some uses, but it comes with too many caveats. What I'd actually like to see is number of each spells casts/ablilities performed. But just APM is better than nothing.