We Want a New Addon
We want an addon that records our pet’s Focus level at a sample-per-second rate and exports that report into a text file, or a CSV-file would be cool too. Something that can be used to make a line-chart that shows Focus level as a function of time.
With testing, we could use this data to determine at what crit-rate Go For the Throat makes Bestial Discipline irrelevant. We think we’re there right now with our 25% crit rate. We think we could dump those two points from Bestial Discipline into something else and won’t starve Claw of Focus.
But we really want to see a Focus-per-second chart. And for that we need a data-collection addon.
Do any addon developers waste their time reading this blog?
Bzak on 30 Sep 2007 at 8:19 pm #
BRK,
Have you looked into Recount? It might be able to provide the data you are looking for. I’m just starting to play around with it myself.
http://www.wowace.com/wiki/Recount
Endymione on 30 Sep 2007 at 10:06 pm #
I ddin’t see any focus count graph in racount, but it might be worht ea try, great addon.
Rither way, I think it ight be a bit more useful to see a “overfocus” addon, because where a focus tracking would show 100, an “overfocus” addon would show how much focus is wasted by each “Go for the Throat” and “Bestial Discipline”.
Andymione and Byakko/Seiryu/Gembu
Doogie on 30 Sep 2007 at 10:27 pm #
And such an overfocus addon might be adaptable for Warriors so they know when they’re wasting Rage, and consequently, when they can go balls-out.
Symbiode on 01 Oct 2007 at 12:11 am #
I’m gonna give it a shot. I’ll try the overfocus thing too, good suggestion.
Someone on 01 Oct 2007 at 12:38 am #
@BRK:
1) Making such an add-on is probably not difficult, especially if no UI is needed, kind of like what I did to gather wild/tamed/hunter data recently.
2) Will have to check the available API/Event functions to see if there’s 1 per second, but probably it would be better to just hook into the focus change event: if the timestamp is also recorded, it will be easy to see how focus is going up/down, although I don’t believe it is possible to see “overfocus” unless it tries to do some intelligent guessing from, say, reading combat log as well… (whenever you crit, you should get a fixed amount of focus depending on GftT TPs used, but it may be a bit hard to do as WoW is heavily event based and some events may come before *or* after other related events! Think of it as what happens when you level up a skill: sometimes you make the item then get the skill-up, others you get the skill-up and *after* you get the “item made” event…
3) I may give it a try maybe tomorrow night as it shouldn’t really take long to do. It most likely won’t record to CSV, but with either a simple perl script or some easy text editor cut/paste should be easy to convert to it…
4) In the meantime, feel free to check my old and simple focus calculator: it’s theoretical but it may be of some use nevertheless… (You can find it on my blog on the “My Own Stuff” section to the left: it’s an excel sheet with nothing but formulas, i.e., no VBScript)
Mikael on 01 Oct 2007 at 4:28 am #
@someone: It should be simple enough, just make a function that samples the current focus of youre pet every second. There is a api for returning the current and max focus of the pet. Altho im thinking that 1 second sampling might be a bit to crude for what youre thinking off. Actually thinking some more, it would prolly be usefull to have both a time sampling and an event sampling, to see in a timeline how the focus goes up and down.
Also, recount doesnt have that kind of function.
Hyouzan on 01 Oct 2007 at 5:27 am #
@BRK
Thanks for such a great resource. I have read you blog from the beginning and wish you started it when I was having probs with my hunter. Anyway, I rerolled him and can’t wait to put the information presented here to good use.
Grumpy on 01 Oct 2007 at 1:23 pm #
It really isn’t what you are looking for, but I use an addon that gives me a summary of my pets DPS after every fight in my chat window. Shows some useful information for me and lets me know how certain things affect his damage.
http://www.curse.com/downloads/details/5629/
There is also a version for your DPS that you can use with it to compare DPS between both of you.
Someone on 01 Oct 2007 at 2:39 pm #
@mikael: “It should be simple enough,”
Yep, it is, but it also depends on *what* you want back! I did a quick test last night and in not many minutes I was recording focus change and timestamps on those changes. Like you guessed, and since pets don’t seem to be affected by the 1.5 seconds GCD, sampling at 1 second intervals would give weird results…
Here’s a quick sample with focus value and time in seconds from first:
65 0,0
50 1,0
25 1,7
73 2,4 < -- Only 0,7 seconds
48 3,4
23 5,1
8 6,0
32 7,4
7 9,1
40 12,0
15 13,0
38 17,1
23 17,4 < -- Only 0,3 seconds
67 21,4
100 26,2
This was a small fight with a same level non-elite mob.
Now, in order to get what BRK wants, it would be a lot more complex! You can tell from the above data that I don’t have “excess” focus as you don’t see it topping 100 during the fight, but if it would, could you tell by how much?
Anyway, I’ll just make a simple perl script to extract that data in a more automated way and then will probably make a quick post explaining how to use, not that it’s that difficult!
Endymione on 01 Oct 2007 at 4:49 pm #
When a pet gains focus via GftT, I think it appears in the combat log (at least it shows on SimpleCombatLog). So every other focus gain must be natural focus regen. Now the question is : do we have focus regen forumla ? I think we have, but I’m too lazy to look for it right now …
Someone on 01 Oct 2007 at 6:17 pm #
Version 0.01 of a focus recording add-on, plus a perl script to “crunch” that data is now available from here.
@Endymione: I don’t know for sure, but most focus changes should be easy to track, the main issue is the complications of an parallel event system in which you can get the events a bit “out of order”.
Bobrek on 02 Oct 2007 at 10:36 am #
If you’re beast mastery spec surely having extra focus from both go for the throat and bestial discipline is a good thing? Rather than wasting it, if you’re using a pet such as a ravager or a cat you could train your bet to use both bite and claw and drop a few armour points for that extra dps in groups/pvp. Any thoughts? (Doesn’t bother me I’ve got a spider for PvE and it can’t learn bugger all xD )
Tzatziki on 02 Oct 2007 at 4:06 pm #
@ Bobrek
BRK’s issue is that he suspects he generates excess focus while having claw and bite active at the same time. And if he does, he could use the points from Beastial Discipline somewhere else.