Allara was nice enough to code a beta addon for us that will eventually help us time our last viper so we end the fight with as little mana as possible.

The goal here is to maximize our overall DPS by spending as little time as possible in the last viper before we kill the boss we're working on. This addon might end up helping other classes too, but it's hunter specific enough that I am posting this thread here.

Since this is the first iteration of this software, I'd like to ask the community to test it out and give feedback on the algorithm. If we can think of any ways to make this better, it will only serve to make us better.

I just posted a new build with a new feature: Reset after consecutive gains. Causes calculations to reset any time you gain mana two or more times consecutively. This will help reset the time if you've used an ability to gain mana during combat.

This will help resolve issues with Aspect of the Viper, as the time should reset and start counting down correctly when you go back to another aspect. The display may be slightly erratic during a long stretch of mana gain, but in general it'll try to hide the timer when it can't get a sensible calculation.

I may also add a configurable reset timer to ensure calculations are fresh during a very long encounter, but let's see how this does.

Feedback definitely welcome!

The description is a bit fuzzy - does it only calculate how long it will take before you go oom? What I am hoping it is doing is calculate a mana burn rate and when you switch into viper, it will remember this number and provide you with an increasing timer. So with a mod like TimeToDie - Addons - Curse you could simply viper until the two numbers match, then switch over to dragonhawk. With only TimeToDie - Addons - Curse I never really have any problems estimating if I will go oom or not and even if I am unsure, often I will only be oom for 2-3 seconds at most and in that case I doubt it's even worth going into viper.

If you could somehow incorporate both addons into this one somehow, that would be absolutely superb.

It takes your current average burn rate and displays how long it will be before you run out of mana at that rate. As your burn rate fluctuates, it averages it out. I'm trying to avoid making this add-on hunter-specific, and I don't want to get into aura detection and other business. The current algorithm (r7) will detect that you're gaining mana and will reset it's calculations when you do. This keeps the timer declining correctly even if you go into Viper for a while. But it doesn't do what you're asking for, which would be to remember what the average burn rate was and increase the timer as you gain mana. Let me think on how I could do that -- I'm sure it's possible.

As to combining TimeToDie and TimeToOom, I wasn't planning on doing that. They're both intentionally very simple add-ons that just display a number on your screen in a font/color of your choosing. I currently have both positioned over my minimap, and they pop in during combat.

If you can think of some good synergies between the two that would actually require the code to be merged, let's discuss that.

The addon was very accurate in telling me how long i had until i was oom, worked every time.

It just gets goofy with AotV and says you have 12 min when your only at 1/2 mana.

I assume you were using r5. Try r7. Although it doesn't show you anything useful yet while you're in AotV, once you switch back out (in my testing) the timer starts working perfectly again.

possibly, i had no idea what setting to put it on. Ill give it a shot, ty.

Wouldn't that require some sort of DPS calculator to figure out how long the boss will live for? That seems like something beyond the scope of this addon.

I only had a chance to test it in five-man heroics, but I liked how it performed. I imagine it'll be even more handy in full raids which I can test tonight.

The one shortcoming I found was that the number stops displaying when there hasn't been an attack for a short period of time. For example, when casting a steady shot shortly after auto shot fired. This is when I'd look to the timer, only to have it vanish before I could register the number.

I'm guessing this is because there isn't a constant feed of information so the number stops calculating when there is no mana usage for a short period, but the time between our shots is the easiest time to look at the number. Would it be possible to have the number persistently displayed while in combat or at least displayed longer before resetting? During those short periods it could simply display the last known value or some such.

edit: tpyos

Keep in mind that TimeToDie is not my add-on, so I can't make changes to it.

Ah, this would be the major downside to the new feature I added in r7. When you stop using mana for a while, you'll naturally regenerate some. If the system sees you regenerate mana twice in a row, it kills the display. This is a harder problem to solve than you might think... I'll be working on it.

Granted I know nothing about coding an addon, but couldn't it just take the average mana gain/loss over X amount of time, be it regen or spent and calculate the use/second and time to oom from there? It'd maybe take a couple seconds into a fight before you get a number, but any significant fight that won't make a huge difference.