Buff Conditions
 

Okay, we have the following buff conditions. What more would you guys like to see?

Someone has already suggested "MyGroup" so they can watch for missing totem buffs on their party. Anyone else have suggestions?

Why are Priests excluded from Caster?

Here is a thought....Is melee all those that melee or those that can melee without mana bars? Ret Paladins and DW Shaman (in fact, I don't see why all shaman won't be in melee for the BoW regen) will most likely be in melee range most, if not all the time.

Since your "alternative" trees will be common in raid scenarios. I'd suggest either Pure Melee and All Melee or including Shaman/Paladins within the melee group...though what to do about cats? Druids too?

This might be a scenario where it's too difficult to figure out what belongs in what group. Casters is almost obvious - except that whole cat form which can't be considered a caster.

Since this seems to be a static list - I don't suppose there is a way to dynamically check these? For instances. Casters (assuming you mean DPS) would include Druids in Moonkin form, but no other form.

I dunno...those terms now seem to general and broad to function properly.

Thats why I'm asking. I need to know what classifications are useful. The reason they are included is they are a single test instead of four tests (in the example of healers). Each class was taken with its primary goal in mind, with the exception of Paladins, who as a tauren druid, I hate.

I'm 100% open to suggestions and completely revamping this list, or removing it entirely.

Priest must be considered as a caster I think, or druid need to be removed of the list as they have a healing role in raid too.

With no disrespect intended, that is a pre TBC mindset which may not work out very well post TBC. With many of the new talents introduced each class can now have a different Primary role than pre 2.0.X/TBC.

Look at the NonTanks being anything that is not a Warrior. Come a few weeks, you're going to have Warriors, Druids, and Paladins all being viable tanks.

I believe you already know all of this, Cladhaire.

In my opinion, I think the following would be ideal:

All
The 8 Individual Classes
My Group
Has Mana
Has No Mana
Other: _______


After all, if one want to include all mana users except Hunters, one could easily check all the individual class boxes save the Hunter, Rogue, and Warrior boxes.

The "Other", if possible, would be a customizable box for a singular person. Perhaps for your focus target or main tank. As a Discipline Priest, I like to know if my focus target has PI on them or not. Or perhaps I only want to know if my MT has a Weakened Soul debuff, and I don't care about anyone else with that debuff.

Regardless of what you implement here, I will continue to use PRaid with a smile on my face. (^&

Yeah, the traditional grouping I don't think is going to work as well as it used to with the hybrid classes coming to fruit, so to speak.

I haven't had the time to check out the code as of yet, but how efficient/possible is it to perform "form" lookups when doing the buff/debuff queries? What I mean is Druid is in Moonkin/Druid/Cat/Bear/ToL form or Priest is in Shadowform. If it's relatively easy, then Mana User group could be all those with mana, except cats/bears.

Healer group could be Priests (not in shadowform, sorry Disc priests :/), Druids in Druid/ToL form, Paladins, Shaman.

I think if the pre-set groups thing is going to work, it's best to include all possibilities and let every user remove the ones they wish to remove because not every raiding group is going to have Ret pallies, moonkins, shadow priests, etc. That could also solve the problem of ignoring form totally and just be a general all inclusive thing?

yes.. i know.
Thats why I said they were a starting point, to see if I could find groupings that would work.

Yeah, I guess I'm just thinking out loud...Seeing if anything comes of it...especially by those that have been testing the Beta.

I dont know if this is far fetched but would it be possible to add like a custom menu..

I am thinking something like

Druid name (x) counts as Melee in this raid (Feral spec Bear/cat form)

It would count kind of like a group override.

Well just an idea since I have no idea how to code lua :D

Yeah, kinda outside the scope of what we're doing. but you can always just tick "druid" =)

I'd like to see check boxes for each group 1-8 to only look at missing buffs from assigned groups.

I'll second Krinla here. A set of 1-8 boxes on the buff/debuff config tab would make raid buffing a snap and would allow a person to change it on the fly from one encounter to the next if necessary. If no box was checked, the default would be to check all groups.

Well it doesn't really work that way, but I've added single groups, as well as a "My Group" checkbox for the latest version.

That's hot - thanks for adding it!

First of all, it isn't my goal to criticize perfectraid with every post :) I used perfectraid before wow 2.0 and am waiting to tell my guildmates about it when it's ready to go. Thanks Cladhaire for the rewrite and new features in progress.

On to buffing:

I don't know how popular/useful/difficult this would be but in my experience you're usually in charge of buffing your own group, which you have support for. You're typically not in charge of buffing other groups with your class. Groups that don't have a representative of your class are up for grabs, and I think most of the people reading this thread are the ones who buff those groups in the end :)

I have 3 points:

1. Love the "My Group" idea.

2. It would be great to have an option for "groups without my class in it."

3. For priests, druids, and paladins (not familiar with shaman at all) there are talents that enhance buffs or actually grant the buff. An exclude list would be great for the above "groups without my class in it" selector. For example, your guild shadow priest might have imp fort (follow me here). So, he wouldn't be in fort's exclude list, but would be in spirit's exclude list. Or a druid without improved mark of the wild... let's say you keep getting tells from people in his group that his buff isn't the improved one. Well, add him to the exclude list for MotW and if you're buffing "my group" and "groups without my class in it," you will buff the druid without improved MotW's group. When the raid leader switches groups around, you don't have to do anything.

This option might seem like a lot of work on the user's part, but you know your guild and the people you run with. In TBC, for most folks this will be even less people.