nailbat.us

Hey,
I saw a post on this addon in some wow forums I read.
http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addo ... s/avr.aspx

It combined with AVR Encounters is another take on DBM/Big Wigs. I'm going to give it a try on Tuesday. I'll likely leave both AVR and DBM running at the same time if I can stand it. I want to see the differences.

From what I can tell, it combines announcements with more visual elements. I watched a couple of videos of people using it for Putricide. When the malleable goo comes out, it'll put out red circles on the ground. I believe these are projected paths of where the goo is heading where not to stand to get splash damage. There are a couple of pictures on the addon's website.

Here's a video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHrRWuUs ... r_embedded

The one thing I really want this for is placement of the malleable goo. In a hectic fight like putricide, and with 25 people in the room, I found it hard to see little balls of killer green death flying at me.

Now the author does warn that blizzard might change out method his addon works. Another person who has tried this addon said they saw it pop up locations of the shock vortexes on blood princes before they ever visible at all. This strikes me as something blizzard will want to fix.

In any case, I'll let you guys know how it goes.

WOW, I just looked at the video.....and that would REALLY help with the malleable goo issues. I agree that there are times though I am aware of DBM announcements that sometimes it is HARD to see the goo until it is like up in your face and then it's too late to side-step....I find myself moving probably way more often than needed and that could affect my DPS.

I'll have to go try it too....and the whole Shock Vortexes showing before they pop up would be really helpful...now if they could only do that malleable goo thing for the kinetic bombs, that would help too! BIG yellow circles on the floor where they appear so it is easily findable? Oh yeah, that would be nice.....especially since I've damned myself by dancing to not having to do kinetic bomb duty and now Dom is "torturing" me with kinetic bomb duty like for-evar!

Thanks!

OOoh also found a video for Festergut using AVR

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQUBgdih ... re=related

Shows you where to NOT stand for the Unstable Explosions.....

So I know a number of us tried this out last night in ICC. It did seem useful.

I found certain functions of it more neat than useful... and others quite useful. It is much more geared towards dps than healing.

Here is what I noticed per fight

Marrowgar:
--> When people were spiked, a red circle inlayed with a white and black circle. This made the spiked people more easily seen.
My Opinion: Meh... People have a HUGE spike through them, they're pretty easy to see. I of course am not dps, so my opinion isn't really worth much

Deathwhisper:
two things:
--> MC'd people had a red circle under them. From what other people said the circle slowly got smaller as the MC wore off (I didn't notice this for death whisper, but I noticed this mechanic for later fights).
--> special adds got a circle under them which moved with them to make them easier to see.

My Opinion: Making targets where the raid needs to quickly target them easier to see is good. I suspect this will be quite helpful in heroic DW.

Gunship:
I didn't see anything

Saurfang:
I didn't see anything myself. I did see a picture on the website which showed optimal placement. I thought the optimal placement pic was quite neat, but it required a good amount of the raid to have AVRE. I don't see it very realistic (nor needed).

Rotface:
For the life of me, I forget what this showed. It was something to do with the exploding slime. I'm not as good in my enhancement spec as my resto spec, so I'm spending a lot more time concentrating on my rotation and trying not to die. I didn't spend much time watching addons =]

Festergut:
--> The person with the spore got a red circle under them which decreased in size as time went on.
My Opinion: The red circle made it quite easy to know where to collapse when needing the the inoculation. I was in range for the first time last night. It was useful to run to the red circle when it showed.

Putricide:
I noticed two things:
--> When malleable goo was released from putricide, a large light blue area would be painted on the ground. We talked a little about this after the fight and we thought this was possible location for goo to land.
--> When goo touched down, it left a red circle. This was a definite goo location.
My Opinion: At one time, I almost ran into goo when trying to get out of the blue area. I'm not sure of the use of that. I'll have to try it again. The red is very nice. It shows you exactly where the goo bounced.

Blood Princes:
--> When a shock vortex is cast, a large white circle is placed on the ground. It comes up very very soon and is very visible.
My Opinion: Being able to quickly see where the shock vortex was coming allowed me to get out of it. I wasn't very good at doing so before.

Blood Queen:
So I noticed nothing. Other people said little while circles showed on the ground under people showing the distance for the blood bolt. I looked for it the next time and didn't see it.

Overall opinion:
1) It's a crutch.... of course any addon like this is a crutch. DBM is a crutch... but DBM is an accepted and stable crutch. AVR is an unstable crutch. We don't know what blizzard thinks about it. If they don't like how it's written, it might go away. So my opinion about crutches are that they are useful to a point. If you are aware that they are a crutch, and use them for that purpose. If you're learning a new fight and want a crutch to help you along until you're comfortable with it... that is fine. If at a later point the crutch stops working(or you use to stop using it), you know the fight, and you should be able to do the fight without it. Think about running ICC w/o dbm. It'd be a pain, but we could do it.
2) I ran with both AVRE and DBM. AVRE is not a replacement for DBM
3) I play with the blizzard camera setting where the camera is always behind me. If you move the camera view to the side, it always moves back behind you. This wasn't working last night and the only addon I installed was AVR/AVRE. I suspect it screwed with it somehow. Anyone else have this problem? I suspect not. It's an unpopular camera setting.
4) I'm not sure I saw anything this mod did which struck me as against the rules form blizzards point of view. It's taking information given by the game and making it more visible. DBM does this in the form of timers and announcements. AVR does it in the from of visible elements on the screen. Blizzard already makes the MC'd person big and red on the DW fight, AVRE makes them just a little more visible with the red circle under their feet. In the way DBM can time certain events, AVRE can guess where goo is going to bounce, and keep track of where it did bounce. The only one that is questionable is the shock vortex. The bloody thing is hard to see in it's small form, so I can't tell if the AVRE circle shows up early or not.

Well that is about it. Anyone else have ideas?

Teth

tethealla wrote:So I know a number of us tried this out last night in ICC. It did seem useful.

I found certain functions of it more neat than useful... and others quite useful. It is much more geared towards dps than healing.

Yeah, it's more of like DPS and Tanking than healing, but it can also help healers in a sense of where NOT to stand since healers usually rely on standing still when casting their heals....at least most healers.

tethealla wrote:
Here is what I noticed per fight

Marrowgar:
--> When people were spiked, a red circle inlayed with a white and black circle. This made the spiked people more easily seen.
My Opinion: Meh... People have a HUGE spike through them, they're pretty easy to see. I of course am not dps, so my opinion isn't really worth much

Deathwhisper:
two things:
--> MC'd people had a red circle under them. From what other people said the circle slowly got smaller as the MC wore off (I didn't notice this for death whisper, but I noticed this mechanic for later fights).
--> special adds got a circle under them which moved with them to make them easier to see.

My Opinion: Making targets where the raid needs to quickly target them easier to see is good. I suspect this will be quite helpful in heroic DW.

Yeah I liked the circles...circlescirclescircles! It made it REALLY easy to spot MCed people in the Deathwhisper fight. And I agree with you on Marrowgar.....if you just tab target you can get the people on spikes just as easily....it's just makes it more apparent if say hunters get spiked...than the people within Marrowgar's hit box.

tethealla wrote:
Saurfang:
I didn't see anything myself. I did see a picture on the website which showed optimal placement. I thought the optimal placement pic was quite neat, but it required a good amount of the raid to have AVRE. I don't see it very realistic (nor needed).

Rotface:
For the life of me, I forget what this showed. It was something to do with the exploding slime. I'm not as good in my enhancement spec as my resto spec, so I'm spending a lot more time concentrating on my rotation and trying not to die. I didn't spend much time watching addons =]

Festergut:
--> The person with the spore got a red circle under them which decreased in size as time went on.
My Opinion: The red circle made it quite easy to know where to collapse when needing the the inoculation. I was in range for the first time last night. It was useful to run to the red circle when it showed.

Re: Saurfang Jr. -- Hmm I didn't see the optimal placement pic....how did you do that?

Oh, the Unstable Ooze Explosion during Rotface....it shows a bunch of BLUE circles on the ground where you should NOT stand and the circles kinda moved a bit since the Unstable Ooze Explosions go where the raid members once where.....VERY useful in knowing where to go and when not to run back until you see all the explosions hit.

And on Festergut, I found the spore red circles were good cause it can show the melee that may not necessarily see the big spiky spore over their head and one of another melee person to know whether to run or not. I found it useful because you can totally tell if there is more than ONE red circle if you have a spore on your head.....and then you can position yourself in a good spot in the melee to get everyone in that red circle to get the inoculation. Plus, if you have the spore, everyone will naturally collapse in more to you.

tethealla wrote:
Putricide:
I noticed two things:
--> When malleable goo was released from putricide, a large light blue area would be painted on the ground. We talked a little about this after the fight and we thought this was possible location for goo to land.
--> When goo touched down, it left a red circle. This was a definite goo location.
My Opinion: At one time, I almost ran into goo when trying to get out of the blue area. I'm not sure of the use of that. I'll have to try it again. The red is very nice. It shows you exactly where the goo bounced.

Blood Princes:
--> When a shock vortex is cast, a large white circle is placed on the ground. It comes up very very soon and is very visible.
My Opinion: Being able to quickly see where the shock vortex was coming allowed me to get out of it. I wasn't very good at doing so before.

Blood Queen:
So I noticed nothing. Other people said little while circles showed on the ground under people showing the distance for the blood bolt. I looked for it the next time and didn't see it.

I think with Putricide, it's like, it's okay to be in the blue, but try to move so you aren't like deep in the blue clusters of circles(i.e. points at which the goo COULD land), the RED circles are DEFINITE spots you cannot go or you will get the haste debuff. If anything, don't be too concerned about moving all the way out of the blue circles, just watch for red circles and don't run into them. Being IN a blue circle is ok unless you see one heading for you then just run out and pay attention on not running into a red circle when you do..if that means running backwards then that's what you have to do.

I DID like the WHITE circle on where the shock vortex was to be cast....makes it a BIG target to like tell you, "NO YOU DO NOT WANT TO GO THERE BUMPER WILL APPEAR VERY SOON" Sometimes the shock vortex bumpers are hard to see until you are right up on them....so this is a good way of marking it...the white circle disappears though, right? When the shock vortex actually appears?

With Blood Queen, you kinda have to be looking at the floor somewhat to see the white lined circle that would denote the space you do NOT want to have people in to avoid blood whirl.

[/quote]

tethealla wrote:
Overall opinion:
1) It's a crutch.... of course any addon like this is a crutch. DBM is a crutch... but DBM is an accepted and stable crutch. AVR is an unstable crutch. We don't know what blizzard thinks about it. If they don't like how it's written, it might go away. So my opinion about crutches are that they are useful to a point. If you are aware that they are a crutch, and use them for that purpose. If you're learning a new fight and want a crutch to help you along until you're comfortable with it... that is fine. If at a later point the crutch stops working(or you use to stop using it), you know the fight, and you should be able to do the fight without it. Think about running ICC w/o dbm. It'd be a pain, but we could do it.
2) I ran with both AVRE and DBM. AVRE is not a replacement for DBM
3) I play with the blizzard camera setting where the camera is always behind me. If you move the camera view to the side, it always moves back behind you. This wasn't working last night and the only addon I installed was AVR/AVRE. I suspect it screwed with it somehow. Anyone else have this problem? I suspect not. It's an unpopular camera setting.
4) I'm not sure I saw anything this mod did which struck me as against the rules form blizzards point of view. It's taking information given by the game and making it more visible. DBM does this in the form of timers and announcements. AVR does it in the from of visible elements on the screen. Blizzard already makes the MC'd person big and red on the DW fight, AVRE makes them just a little more visible with the red circle under their feet. In the way DBM can time certain events, AVRE can guess where goo is going to bounce, and keep track of where it did bounce. The only one that is questionable is the shock vortex. The bloody thing is hard to see in it's small form, so I can't tell if the AVRE circle shows up early or not.

Well that is about it. Anyone else have ideas?

Teth

I had both AVRE and DBM going. I think having both kinda helps. I can see who AVR could be a help in SOME fights where the game relies that you SEE stuff more clearly....but knowing the fights also helps. So, it's more of a small aid and may train you to have a better reaction time to things.

I like it, I kinda hope they don't get rid of it....but if they do, eh....I can live without it. For now, I will use it for fights that it actually helps in.

If they do make the changes to get rid of this addon then I do still think that it's worth trying it out for at least one ID especially if unclear on mechanics. It gives a very good visual indicator for some things, which is good for some fights in plague where there's either no graphic indicator or the indicator is so indistinct as not to be useful. Less so for others, for Putricide for instance it could have been zomg gamechanger, but that it can't identify the exact spots the goos are heading in makes it a bit less valuable. If it could have handled Putricide's goos I would have said it would be gone for absolutely sure, there's still a good chance it might not stay around for long - but it's not a mod that will suddenly enable people who normally stand in fire to down bosses they otherwise would not have. I wouldn't depend on it, but trying it a couple of IDs might not be a bad idea for the visual 'oh, yeah THAT's why that approach never worked out for me!'.

3: I usually run with more 3d isometric view, or even pure top down on a few fights. What I did notice was that if I changed my camera view sometimes my AVRE circles that were already on the ground would move around a bit too. Not all, just some. It seems to be a mod that has problems with you changing the camera in general.

4: Yeah, I mean things like counting down the MC, marking the MC'd person - there's other mods that can do that already. It can't handle the malleable goo perfectly for instance - and there's already mods that say "goo on me!", the blue circles are just proximity locators for people who could potentially get it thrown at them. The shock vortex graphic isn't too bad to see, it's mostly that it doesn't stand out as much as some of the other glowy components of that fight so while focused on orb/bomb/range you can accidentally run into it - it's helpful but I wouldn't immensely so. Blood queen white range circles were nice, but you can do the same thing with /range in DBM, the only difference is the visual component makes it a bit easier in which direction to move to get out of range of someone faster. The only thing that's kind of 'new' that you can't get elsewhere is the circles where people were when the explody poopoo burst - if it gets axed it will probably be for that ability to mark past location in a very clear visual manner since that is unique to it. And that was extremely helpful in making sure when moving I didn't accidentally move into a place someone else had been standing in when it exploded.

I suspect that if the addon stops working, it will be something more subtle than the reasons we're coming up with. It'll probably be more that the game designers didn't like how the addon author wrote the addon.

So I might have been premature when I started this "this addon might go away" thread of thinking. I said that because I saw this:

I know a lot of people will ask: this is JUST an addon and it doesn't use anything else than the Blizzard's API, you won't get banned for using that (but I cannot guarantee that Blizzard will not disable it at some point).

Today I did a bit more reading. I read further in the AVRE FAQ:

Is this even allowed?

Technically, AVR and AVRE don't do anything that violates Blizzard's rules. When Blizzard enabled in-instance map coordinates in patch 3.3, this opened the floodgates for all sorts of additional boss mods like this. It is very likely that Blizzard will remove this functionality in the future, so don't grow too attached to it!

And from the AVR FAQ

Is this against Blizzard's Terms of Service?

A common misconception is that AVR somehow edits WoW models or textures. AVR does nothing of the like. AVR also does not inject into the process or do anything else that's forbidden by the Terms of service. AVR is completely written in lua and operates only in the WoW addon environment. Of course Blizzard has the right to ban any addon they want, but until they do, AVR doesn't violate the Terms of Service or the addon development policy in any way.

So AVR does nothing wrong. AVRE does nothing wrong...

The AVRE FAQ is a good read(http://www.wowace.com/addons/avr-encounters/). It basically talks about why it can't draw anything on the goo or the ghosts because they aren't targetable.

Another thing I just noticed is that AVRE is not the only AVR enabled boss mod. Raid Watch 2 (http://www.wowace.com/addons/rw2/) is AVR enabled and according to the website does the timers like dbm/big wigs. It's something else to try.

Lastly (since I really should be doing work =), I was wrong about my saurfang comment being from AVRE. http://www.wowace.com/addons/avr/images ... -saurfang/ is the image I saw. I believe this is an ability built into AVR. It's like the /range function of dbm on steroids (http://www.wowace.com/addons/avr/pages/ ... ning-scene). I'll give it a shot next time I do Saurfang.

tl;dr. really.
good? or bad?

Camyu wrote:tl;dr. really.
good? or bad?

Bad.
It's a crutch.
Expect it to go away.
If it helps someone learn the fights after endless explanations, great.
Then, we'll go back to drawing more MSPaint diagrams.

That's what I thought.