I'm always planning addon functionalities. This time I came up with a pretty nasty one: Chain-CC. The addon needs to be installed by everyone in the PvP group.
At first everyone must set a priority number. People discuss it before PvP. In the match the addon watches distance and among the people who are in range picks the highest priority guy. He will be the CC-master. Obviously if he dies or gets out of range, a new CC master is chosen. If there are more than 2 people in range, a CC-master is chosen. The CC-master is notified about him being the master. He will set a focus-target. For the people in range the addon set the same focus target (if it's impossible, tell them to do manually).
When the CC-master casts a CC on the focus target, or if he presses a hotkey, the addon start calculating optimal CC-chain, figuring out who should CC next. Determines who can CC the target (must be in range, sometimes melee range), and picks the best CC for next. Best being the one that lasts longest (because not on DR), and among those the one that can't be dispelled (cyclone, stun).
When the previous CC wears off, dispelled or trinketed, the guy who must CC next is notified by a raid warning like text and audio (I suggest "Stomp now!" by Lord Rhyolith). Obviously if the prioritized CC-er gets out of range or get CC-ed himself, the addon picks another CC-er.
Of course the addon should calculate cast times, so if a mage polymorph is the next CC, "Stomp now!" arrives 1.5 secs before the last CC wears off. If the CC is broken/dispelled/trinketed, an available instant-cast CC-er is prioritized over the mage. Actually it could even watch the GCD of the players, so if I can cast 1.4 secs from now and X can cast 0.8 secs from now, X will be prioritized.
With this addon, Chain-CC-ing becomes trivial task. You just need a "/cast [target=focus,harm,nodead] whateverspell" macro keybound and blindly press the button when you hear "Stomp now!"
For zerg-like battles where 5+ people are present both side, the addon can even set 2 CC-masters and automatically sort the people into 2 CC-groups so 2 enemies are chain-CC-ed.
Anyone writes this addon is offered 100K gold what he can pick on Agamaggan-EU (and transfer away if he pleases). The addon would of course be downloadable from curse.com or some other addon site.
What is my purpose with such addon? The short goal is obviously win. However pretty soon all high rated teams would use the addon, so it wouldn't give any edge anymore. The long-term goal is completely remove the need of communication in PvP, as it cannot be matched with the pug philosophy (as it needs a dedicated leader who thinks for the others).
At first everyone must set a priority number. People discuss it before PvP. In the match the addon watches distance and among the people who are in range picks the highest priority guy. He will be the CC-master. Obviously if he dies or gets out of range, a new CC master is chosen. If there are more than 2 people in range, a CC-master is chosen. The CC-master is notified about him being the master. He will set a focus-target. For the people in range the addon set the same focus target (if it's impossible, tell them to do manually).
When the CC-master casts a CC on the focus target, or if he presses a hotkey, the addon start calculating optimal CC-chain, figuring out who should CC next. Determines who can CC the target (must be in range, sometimes melee range), and picks the best CC for next. Best being the one that lasts longest (because not on DR), and among those the one that can't be dispelled (cyclone, stun).
When the previous CC wears off, dispelled or trinketed, the guy who must CC next is notified by a raid warning like text and audio (I suggest "Stomp now!" by Lord Rhyolith). Obviously if the prioritized CC-er gets out of range or get CC-ed himself, the addon picks another CC-er.
Of course the addon should calculate cast times, so if a mage polymorph is the next CC, "Stomp now!" arrives 1.5 secs before the last CC wears off. If the CC is broken/dispelled/trinketed, an available instant-cast CC-er is prioritized over the mage. Actually it could even watch the GCD of the players, so if I can cast 1.4 secs from now and X can cast 0.8 secs from now, X will be prioritized.
With this addon, Chain-CC-ing becomes trivial task. You just need a "/cast [target=focus,harm,nodead] whateverspell" macro keybound and blindly press the button when you hear "Stomp now!"
For zerg-like battles where 5+ people are present both side, the addon can even set 2 CC-masters and automatically sort the people into 2 CC-groups so 2 enemies are chain-CC-ed.
Anyone writes this addon is offered 100K gold what he can pick on Agamaggan-EU (and transfer away if he pleases). The addon would of course be downloadable from curse.com or some other addon site.
What is my purpose with such addon? The short goal is obviously win. However pretty soon all high rated teams would use the addon, so it wouldn't give any edge anymore. The long-term goal is completely remove the need of communication in PvP, as it cannot be matched with the pug philosophy (as it needs a dedicated leader who thinks for the others).
11 comments:
How about including cooldowns on the opponents team cc breakers?
The focus/target can't be done directly because it's a protected function but it's possible to work around it to get close to what you want.
But I'm more interested in your motivation. You obviously realise that there's a need for communication between players and that written comms aren't adequate but you steadfastly refuse to accept the obvious solution, speak to each other.
You're allowing dogma to override logic.
"The long-term goal is completely remove the need of communication in PvP."
By and large an addon telling someone to do something is communication. Whether it comes from an individual or some other source, its the same.
I do see the value in this addon (much like Kill the Healer addons or whatever) for morons but for RBGs? Given you are co-ordinating as a team, surely there would be some semblance of people in an RBG not wasting their DRs on targets?
BG Gladius works like the normal Arena Gladius frames and will show when DRs are going to expire etc in the frames as well as trinket timers and the like. Perhaps your RBG team should look into this addon more?
I believe that for some time, blizzard prevented add ons from changing focus while in combat.
Also, add ons are prevented from getting cool down information. So a mage might have an instant Polymorph if PoM is available, it might be a normal cast or it might not be off cool down for 20 seconds.
Besides, you will need to coordinate not only who to CC but also who to attack and perhaps who needs healing cool downs.
Obviously, you can do well with your current system. But the identical people, with a leader and voice chat, will always do better.
@Chewy: the idea that a leader in voice can effectively coordinate individual CC casts is nonsense. He can call CC-targets, that's all.
Also, automatic communication system doesn't need a dedicated guy who thinks for the others, everyone is equal.
@Gevlon
You don't have to co-ordinate the cooldowns on CC you only have to co-ordinate the order that players apply the CC and to which target. There are already addons available that will tell you the CC/Debuffs/Buffs on a target and when they expire (Raven and Quartz are two that come to mind).
Your addon is a good idea but I'm convinced that you're motivation is to avoid having to concede that voice is an advantage.
BattlegroundTargets
tells you how many players focus which target, once main target is set all you would need is a indicator for incomming cc on other targets, people should have the brain to cc targets not being already focused by someone else
you just might add a global trinket watch so targets with trinket on cd are preffered
regarding your addon gevlon it needs a wast ammount of communication, if it creates a channel for itselv someone could jamm it, if it uses whispers it won't work as whispers/time is resricted and it would need more volume.
This would have been amazing when I was getting Gladiator as a Prot Warrior. With a dozen different cc options I had to just improvise and lock down healers or dps on the fly. My partner and I had to learn to track each other's cooldowns and instinctually know when it was time for the paladin to hammer of justice instead of the warrior to conc blow. We got to the point where my partner knew when fears were coming without us even saying a word to each other.
Little nuances win matches, and having an addon like this would be a godsend in group pvp. Once you get beyond 5 people, it's basically impossible to track all of the major cooldowns, let alone minor cc ones. Having an addon which would tell players the order of CC... that's pure awesome.
There's only one problem with the addon: People move around, get out of range, and get cc'd themselves.
The fun of PVP is the chess-match nature of positioning, CC, health bars, and mana pools. I don't think addons can ever remove the thinking nature of these aspects of PVP, but I'm sure that there are ways to improve the input of information that players have to process at any one moment.
YES! On my alts I pvp without voice chat and I feel lost. If this addon was released this would make my life easier.
This is the solution for a problem. Managing cc without voice chat can be challenging. I am a big fan of the functionality. It would require less practice on cc setups for new teams.
Will it be possible to have an addon do what you suggest?
The functionality:
1) It needs to calculate positioning and LoS.
2) It needs to keep track of DR. Did the target get feared/charged earlier (by accident)?
3) Can someone cc or not?
And this doesn't count in the human factor. Mid match you normally realize the 'skill' of a player. Does the priest require a stun/silence, so that you can actually get the sheep off (in the next patch this becomes even a bigger factor). Sometimes you need to cc 1-2 seconds earlier. This is not too big of a problem however.
I do reckon that people should choose to become a cc master by using cc, rather than by being prioritized. LoS, enemy cooldowns, positioning are all too vital, the need to save someone/interupt something. An addon cant possibly calculate when cc is optimal.
A question that should arise is:
Are your team members interupted/in range/LoS/free from having a melee on them who can interupt/free to move in LoS.
It needs to keep track of DR. Did the target get feared/charged earlier. -> this is the main functionality it has to have. The other 2 elements can be countered.
To solve this I would suggest having a system where people can toggle cc on and off by pressing a macro-ed key (maybe a 3rd 'non optimal' option). This would avoid situations where people should cc while being focused on, in range of getting interrupted, ...
When the new cc-er gets interupted, out of LoS, cc-ed or oor, it must immediately pick the next best route. You covered this, but it is vital :)
Additional comments
Setting up a focus target is not possible.
I do love the sound aspect. Sounds are easier to process in a visual game.
Having this addon can become a liability when other people know the math behind it. Following a set amount of rules can more easily be countered. Will the addon suggest a sheep after this stun -> interupt the mage as late as possible.
I do not think that it should contain the opponents team cc breakers as Anon suggested. There are other addons that already do this. This is also why I suggested that a player chooses to start a cc chain to get the addon going.
Reposting.
I agree. I played the same setup as you Marcko. Not noticing charge stuns were huge as paladin. Small things like DR on stuns (using it while DR had 1 second left) has lost us quite a few matches. It took some practice and an addon would have certainly helped.
I wonder what you think of my previous post. It is basically Gevlon's idea, with the option to toggle yourself off from casting cc (when you are unable to) and to initiate chains yourself. This should fix those problems.
I think it would help out a lot if it had a similar functionality as the DiminshingReturns addon added to it. To make the DR visible as additional information.
It would be even more efficient if you could just play with bots who did exactly what you told them to, or perhaps had some limited decision-making ability of their own. Then you wouldn't have to communicate at all!
Seriously, instead of daydreaming about ways to reduce teamwork, why don't you play a single player game or one where detailed communication isn't necessary such as TF2? Honest question -- you seem to dislike teamwork, so I'm not sure why you keep playing a teamwork-oriented game and then complaining about it.
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