RetAlert: be alerted when hit by a Slayer's Retribution ability (100% abandoned)

[Omegus]

AKA the "Why are my channelled abilities being interupted so quickly?" addon

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A long time ago I made an addon for my guild which alerted people to when they were being hit by Retribution (the Slayer’s channelled AOE) to prompt them to either move away from the Slayers or use some form of AOE interrupt into the big angry ball of Retributioning (real word) Slayers to shut them down. That addon has slowly spread and has seemingly been amended to trigger when hit by other channelled abilities, such as Get To Da Choppa. I’ve decided to make my version public so anyone can amend it as they see fit.

The version I am uploading is not an exact copy of the one I made for the guild as I have lost my copy. I have remade today based on an old test version and it should work identically. I have no intentions of ever updating this addon so do not look for new versions or bug fixes from me. I’m sure some of you will want to start a healthy and constructive debate on the ethics of private addons; please do not use this thread for that.

The “alert” that comes up on screen is this masterpiece:

Spoiler:

I will now attempt to pre-empt the questions/complaints with this FAQ:

1) OMG HOW?!?
Any time you do damage, do healing, get damaged or get healed, the server tells the client what ability caused it. This is used to generate combat log entries, display the floating damage/heal numbers next to people, etc. This addon accesses that same data and checks if the damage is a) being received and b) came from Retribution. If so, it displays the image in the spoiler tags above and plays the sound effect of a female dwarf being turned into a chicken (yes really).

2) OMG NERFED BUTTONS?!?!
No, this literally just displays an image on screen for just over a second and plays a stupid sound effect. It’s the equivalent of using Aura to alert you to buffs/etc. The only reason I made this addon is because Aura did not have an option to trigger the auras from combat/damage events.

3) OMG IT NOT FAIR
Nope

4) OMG DEV BAN?
Pretty much impossible without banning the entire concept of damage numbers appearing on screen, and disabling the combat log entirely.

5) OMG DESTRO BIAS
Yes. To make the addon order-biased, open up RetAlert.lua and change “local alert_ability_id = 1450” on the first line to a number that represents a Destro ability you don’t like. No, I am not going to provide a list of IDs, especially not the one for Wind of Insanity.

6) How to configure the appearance/etc?
Type /retalert in chat for a list of some settings. In addition, to change the size and the opacity of the window just open up the game’s main UI layout editor. Finally, to change the ability it triggers from look at question 5. It’s not very user-friendly in terms of changing settings but it was literally made for one purpose a year ago.

7) Can it work for single-target channelled abilities?
Only if you're the one getting hit by it, otherwise the server won't send you the damage details.

[Kpi]

Question, only works with 1 abilities? or u can custom 2+, adding extra “local alert_ability_id = XXXXX”?

[Omegus]

Question, only works with 1 abilities? or u can custom 2+, adding extra “local alert_ability_id = XXXXX”?

This version only works with one ability. You'll need to modify alert_ability_id to be a table of ability IDs and have RetAlert_OnWorldObjCombatEvent check the table to see if the ID of the ability causing the damage is in the table.

[Kpi]

Question, only works with 1 abilities? or u can custom 2+, adding extra “local alert_ability_id = XXXXX”?

This version only works with one ability. You'll need to modify alert_ability_id to be a table of ability IDs and have RetAlert_OnWorldObjCombatEvent check the table to see if the ID of the ability causing the damage is in the table.

Tyvm

[anarchypark]

as long as it doesn't automatically trigger interrupt skills it's fine.

perhaps you know something about auto interrupt?
It's been a bane for my dps dok lifetap channel.
once i got instantly interrupted, i tested with AoE dot casting, running around spamming it.
guess what, it got interrupted. by knight taunt, who were not even near me.
felt like even auto targeting channeling user.
I decoyed AoE spam for him to spend interrupt skill and after that lifetap was not interrupted.
so he was interrupting any channel nearby.

maybe i'm paranoia. but it's mostly knight or WL doing instant interrupt.

not accusing or anything. just curious.

[Toshutkidup]

I’ve come across few people that have some very fast interiors on channels. I’m also not saying anything nefariousis happening, some players could be that fast or have an add on that alerts when something is used. But not a super big issue imo.

[Ninjagon]

I'd rather die thousand times than use this s**t once.

[Emissary]

Wouldn't it be a shame if others had an advanced version of this mod with auto interrupts. Glad that does not happen in this game, underground addons made for certain guilds would never fly.

[Bosli]

perhaps you know something about auto interrupt?
It's been a bane for my dps dok lifetap channel.
once i got instantly interrupted, i tested with AoE dot casting, running around spamming it.
guess what, it got interrupted. by knight taunt, who were not even near me.
felt like even auto targeting channeling user.

AFAIK there is (still) no way at all (anymore) to /target players, Zomega can hopefully confirm. This means that targeted interrupts aka taunts should be impossible unless they keep you in target until the channel happens. The only things feasible would be auto-casting AoE interrupts on next gcd when set channels happen (wl/sm/mara etc.), though that should be blocked by the anti-NB system to not allow replacing skills on hotbars, and even then it would only reliably work if you yourself get hit by channel, or need a fairly complex system of check target - check if in group - check distance - and still not reliably know if the channeler is in interrupt range.

[Ladypriest]

Imagine how many other private addons there are out there... and what can they do? Interesting...