Threat on nameplates

[Yhor]

I've been thinking about this a lot since I'm a part time tank on my Druid. There's always that 'one' mob that is barely out of range of Swipe that keeps casting a spell on your healer. I can find it fairly easy, but I've seen others that can't seem to grasp tabbing through the enemies to find it. You also want to be able to tell a warlock, mage, boomkin with more confidence.. "aoe safe".

There are options to put a castbar on nameplates, how hard would putting a threat meter on nameplate be?

Simplified Flintstones type web drawing...
____________
l____I>______l
l__Mobname__l
l__Castbar'___l

Mobname "is" the nameplate.
Castbar is the mobs casting bar.

I = where your threat 'is' by percentage.
> Indicates you are still gaining threat.

Sorry for my over simplified drawing, but I think it's explained well enough. Any questions or comments on how this could be done, or if it's even possible, would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

[Psoewish]

Aloft is hands-down the best nameplate addon available, and has a threat display part. I've never used it myself though, so I'm not sure how it works exactly (the threat part that is).

[Yhor]

Originally Posted by Psoewish Aloft is hands-down the best nameplate addon available, and has a threat display part. I've never used it myself though, so I'm not sure how it works exactly (the threat part that is).

Last time I used Aloft (about 2 weeks ago), it threw bugs at me like an Alligator in the swamps of Florida sneezing in my face. I liked Aloft before the bugs, but I think the in-game nameplates are fine also.

On Aloft comments, http://www.wowinterface.com/download....html#comments , I found a bit more detail on this topic (threat on nameplates). The comment post stamped at 10:38AM on 18 November (today) gives a good bit of detail on the difficulty involved.

[Seerah]

Was it the currently maintained version of aloft from this site?

[Psoewish]

I just Google'd, and basically everyone points me towards Aloft. There are 2 very simple ones to change the color of the healthbar or textures and fonts and stucc, but none as good as Aloft.

I've also just read the description, and it seems to be able to display the actual threat to in addition to the aggro glow

Finally, Aloft (this UPDATED version) provides a full-featured threat indicator capability: 1. Player threat displayed on player target's nameplate (the player has no bar-style nameplate) 2. Group threat (including pets/summons) displayed on group nameplates 3. Threat bar and threat text capabilities 4. Threat bar and threat text can be enabled independently 5. Can be enabled while solo (for pet-owning classes) 6. Control over display colors to indicate common threat and maximum threat thresholds 7. Threat gain threshold display (i.e. omen-style "aggro bar") capability for player threat 8. Threat threshold nameplate "glow" (separate from aggro glow, see below); Threshold can be customized 9. Uses the WoW 3.x native threat event model and API

^taken from the description page.
I'm sorry, this is all I can help, unless I overlooked something it's gonna be either this or writing your own addon it seems

[Yhor]

Originally Posted by Seerah Was it the currently maintained version of aloft from this site?

Yes Seerah, it wasn't the fault of Aloft (I should have said this already), it was a piece of my code (I'm a newby with code btw) not playing nice with Aloft.

[Yhor]

I guess after further investigation

http://s.wowinterface.com/preview/pvw20060.jpg

Aloft has exactly what I'm looking for. I guess I'll abandon my semi useless range code I was trying to work on so I can get this functionality. Thanks for looking at my request.

[Psoewish]

What do you mean with useless range code?
Were you perhaps trying to get the nameplates to show outside the 15 yard range limit? Cause that's not possible, it's protected by Blizz.

[Yhor]

Originally Posted by Psoewish What do you mean with useless range code? Were you perhaps trying to get the nameplates to show outside the 15 yard range limit? Cause that's not possible, it's protected by Blizz.

No, it had nothing to do with nameplates specifically.

[Psoewish]

Heh ok, well I still want to know what kind of range thing you wanted, maybe someone has come across an addon that does that?

I mean, some addons have very obscure names that would never make you realise what it does.

[Yhor]

I'm just trying to learn 'how code works', as for what I was working on, there are other addons that do it, so no biggy .

[acapela]

Originally Posted by Yhor Yes Seerah, it wasn't the fault of Aloft (I should have said this already), it was a piece of my code (I'm a newby with code btw) not playing nice with Aloft.

whew... good news (at least from Aloft's perspective). there were a number of things that jumped out of WotLK, and i made a few typos trying to fix them, which did not help... it took a few releases for Aloft to stabilize.

but Aloft 2.4.6-315 (most recent version as of 2008/11/18) appears to be relatively stable (so far). and thanks as always to Seerah, i often come across threads in which the poster has already been steered to the latest/greatest version.

anyway, Aloft's current threat implementation would give you about what Omen would give you (group threat against your current target), plus the Blizzard aggro glow.

we have been discussing trying to do more with the threat subsystem, but it looks like it would be pretty resource-intensive to do. it does not look like Blizzard's threat event model covers anything to a useful degree except the current target (from the perspective of each player). so, to gather more information Aloft (or any other addon) would need to query additional targets and/or get into the business of exchanging data over the addon channel with other installations of itself.

i am still digging into this, but it is not too promising so far.

[p3lim]

Gonna get my old nameplates working (unofficial version for my own usage) and add some threat display to them, Could be very handy since It looks like Im still tanking at 80.

[Yhor]

I just want to say, I love Aloft (still haven't re downloaded since a few weeks back though, I'm being lazy). You have a nice nameplate, and I hope you can find the solutions you're looking for to implement a better 'agro detection', though it appears from looking at you SSs that you've done a fair job. Keep working on it man, you have a great addon.

[Psoewish]

Acapela ... maybe it would be possible to make Aloft fetch data from Omen?

First of all, anyone that needs the threat system in Aloft is most likely a raider, and raiders have Omen. I can't remember the last time I've seen a guild where it wasn't a required addon.

And second, you can make it so that it only benefits from having Omen, but is not required, like how it is right now.

Then you can state on the download page that "for better display of the threat amongst different enemies at once -- I recommend downloading Omen *insert link to Omen here*"

Just an idea. :P

[dafire]

Omen 3 don't has the multiple target threat anymore... it's just a another frontend to the blizzard threat api.

[OarisJM]

Originally Posted by p3lim Gonna get my old nameplates working (unofficial version for my own usage) and add some threat display to them, Could be very handy since It looks like Im still tanking at 80.

*cheer*

I was sad when pTags stopped working, hope you release your new version.

[acapela]

Originally Posted by dafire Omen 3 don't has the multiple target threat anymore... it's just a another frontend to the blizzard threat api.

yeah, Omen3 and Aloft (currently) function essentially the same way, when it comes to threat: collecting threat for all groupmembers against the player's current target, re-collecting it if the player's target changes, and displaying it in some fashion associated with each groupmember (whether on a list or on nameplates).

i agree that Omen, with its ordered "hate-list" sort of presentation, offers a more intuitive UI for showing relative threat... and of course for ranged DPS, nameplates effectively disappear (change from bar-style to text-style, and therefore fall outside of Aloft's control) outside of 15 yards.

i think "serious" users of the Aloft threat system are tanks/melee-DPS interested primarily in the various "glow" effects that have been implemented, to warn them when a target leaves them or is getting close, or has jumped onto them (or a group-member) or is getting close. having something appear on a target or groupmember nameplate under these circumstances can be useful.

some forms of this, however, require threat data gathering, so some of the overhead is inescapable (though it can be disabled by the user if desired, via options).

[Atherinas]

I just wanted to know what the current situation on this topic is...I just got back to tanking after a long time,and i'm searching for something like this...

As it seems though,Aloft(beta) wont work quite that way.I read on the addon's page here that in order to get threat bars/glows on all mobs,they have to be assigned with a raid icon,AND targeted by someone...Under those two conditions,it works swell...But anyone done any Wotlk raids knows that fully marked mobs are probably 2% of the pulls...and even if they are,you cant have every mob targeted...

I also noticed that enabling the blizzard threat warning,solves this issue,partially.I'd still like to get rid of the huge text coming off the mob,and also a treat threshold would really help.(i'm also thinking of the case where,for example,i play my lock and i want my void tanking mobs while i DoT them up,and to know which one needs taunting from the void)

If anyone has any info on this,would be really appreciated

[Tristanian]

I would not touch the threat "issues" with a 10 foot stick. The Omen page and Xinhuan himself has taken painstaking effort to make it perfectly clear that the Blizzard API does not return threat data on any mob you are not in direct combat with. In addition, the threat API only allows queries for threat data on units that somebody in the raid is targeting. There is no way around this limitation sort of going back to the old-Omen2-Threat-2.0 broadcasting system where threat in these particular cases, was an educated guess calculated based on what was known or approximated from observed behaviors. Healing threat in particular was almost always wrongly calculated. Imo, the overhead of the old system doesn't really warrant such a change, especially when there is virtually no content requiring this at the moment.