[WIP] PvP Enemy Abilities addon

[Hazal]

As some of you might know in 5.2 Blizzard changed PVP pet battles to where you can't check which abilities the enemy has.
Due to this I've thought about making an addon which will keep track of what abilities the enemy pets has or can have.
I am not sure if this is the appropriate part of the forum to post this in, if it's incorrectly placed please move it for me:)

I only started making this addon a few weeks ago as a fun side project while getting my Trainer title. Since you guys are probably the users who will use it I'd like to hear some ideas for improvement about it. I'd like to note that this is the first addon I have ever made and I don't have a lot of programming experience.

As I am unable to link pictures (8 posts) I will try and explain what my addon does in depth. Once I get to 8 posts I will provide screenshots
EDIT: Here comes the screenshots. Ask if you want some more screenshots
Abilities known:
Abilities with cooldowns:
Mouseover tooltips(can't see my mouse on screenshot but it's hovering over the bottom right ability):

My addon check what abilities the current enemy pet has (total 6 options) then it shows greyed out icons of these abilities. Once an ability has been used it will gain it's colour back. If the ability has a cooldown upon being used, the ability will be greyed out and will show a number on the ability which tells how many rounds there will be left until the ability will be used again.

Upon mousing over an ability you can read about what it does, it's cooldown etc. Just like when you mouse over some of your own abilities.

Current known errors:
When facing pets which could have the same ability as your own pet, it will detect it as the enemy using the ability even when it's your own pet.

Some things I'm considering working on:
Make it possible to show only 3 abilities when fighting in PvE combat against trainers.
Done - Make the frame moveable (high priority) and have it save it's position
Show if the abilities are strong or weak against your pet with an icon.
Save enemy pet comps and gather statistics about what abilities they use and show which abilities the opponents comp most likely will use based on previous pet battles.
Make it possible to see the ability frames for all pets, even the inactive ones.
Mouseover tooltips on pets showing the abilities which are known.


Edit: I'm currently not playing a lot of WoW so this project is set on hold. I will update once I do more with this addon

[Brisela]

Is it available for download now?

Brisela

[Hazal]

Is it available for download now?

Brisela

No not yet. I'd like to have it a bit better looking and with more options and so on before releasing it to the public.

[Brisela]

Thats cool

[Yamum]

Sounds like a great idea!

[Hazal]

I'm making a video showing the addon in a pet battle so you can see it in action
EDIT: Here is the video: [url]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJypK_EHT4c[/url]
It's only the ability bars on the left that are part of my addon.

[Iamwhatis]

Besides the screen for the two active pets do a completely other screen, an additional screen, if moveable isn’t happening yet put it off to the left side This screen should show each of your pets 3 times on the left with each of his pets lined up one after the other just to the right of your pets. So first time your first pet is listed his first pet is listed to the right. Then your first pet would be listed again. His second pet would be listed right under his first pet just to the right of the second listing of your first pet. Then your first pet would be listed for a third time his third pet would be listed just to the right and right under his second pet. Your pet would only show the 3 skills you selected each time. His pets would initially show all six skills but as things progress some skills would get a lock sign on them and skills with cool downs would show a number. For each of your pets you would have 3 rows of skills one row each to the left of each of his pets. To the right of your pet’s skills you would show his pet icon and two rows of his pet’s skills. Here is the important part use arrows to show which skills you have that are more affective against his pets and which ones are less affective and do the same for his. This way you will have a clear graphic of how your pets stack up against each of his and how his stack up against each of yours and you will also see if you should swap in a pet because maybe it has a strong ability against his current pet and so on. Also you will see which of his back line pets and your back line pets have skills that are coming off cool downs and might be swapped back in. Repeat the whole process for your second and third pet. The rows showing his pets ability will be 6 rows for each of your pets so a total of 18 rows for all of the enemy’s pets skills. Each of your pets will be listed 3 times so you can see how it stacks up against any of his pets. There will be a total of 8 columns; your pet icon and 3 skills and his pet icon and 3 skills.

It would look something like this (I used words where there would be boxes and dashes where there would just be space):

Pet1 ability ability ability Pet1 ability ability ability
------------------------------Pet1 ability ability ability
Pet1 ability ability ability Pet2 ability ability ability
------------------------------Pet2 ability ability ability
Pet1 ability ability ability Pet3 ability ability ability
------------------------------Pet3 ability ability ability

Pet2 ability ability ability Pet1 ability ability ability
------------------------------Pet1 ability ability ability
Pet2 ability ability ability Pet2 ability ability ability
------------------------------Pet 2 ability ability ability
Pet2 ability ability ability Pet3 ability ability ability
------------------------------Pet3 ability ability ability

Pet3 ability ability ability Pet1 ability ability ability
------------------------------Pet1 ability ability ability
Pet3 ability ability ability Pet2 ability ability ability
------------------------------Pet 2 ability ability ability
Pet3 ability ability ability Pet3 ability ability ability
------------------------------Pet3 ability ability ability



Also show all dots with timers on all the pets in the above screens so we can see for example how many tics are left on each dot for the back line pets. The pet icon’s themselves should show remaining health and speed. The speed number should be adjusted for any buff or nerf currents in affect and the remaining time of the buff or nerf should be shown. The skill icons should show how much damage they would typically do to the pet they are up against and their percentage hit chance which should be adjusted for whether and any other affects.

Forget a PVE application they exist

Stick to only PVP if you want to also do PVE then have an option to auto turn off your app in PVE so those who only want to use it in PVP can

Every part should be scalable and moveable

As the enemy uses ability and the other ability goes away either delete that box (leave the space but delete the box) or put a big lock on it.

For the screen on the active pet put an arrow up or down for each ability showing whether it’s strong or week against the current pet.

[Hazal]

I like the idea about showing all the enemies abilities and cooldowns but I don't find it that necessary for showing your own pets abilities. I know which of my pets have strong abilities and weak abilities against the different types of pets there are.
I have already strongly considered making up and down arrows to show which abilities are strong and which ones are weak against your current pet.

I think that it would fill up too much of the screen if you had to show what is strong and what is weak against all your pets like your suggested, but I'll keep the idea in mind.

I agree that there are many addons for PvE pet battles already and I wouldn't implement a Pve functionality without being able to enable/disable it.

Currently it is a high priority to make the frames moveable but I'm not sure if I am going to make them scaleable.

But thanks a lot for your suggestions and remember to keep in mind that this is the first addon I am ever making so it will take longer than the usual addon developer to implement things and make changes.

[Iamwhatis]

I don't find it that necessary for showing your own pets abilities.

I think that it would fill up too much of the screen

I can not remember which of my abilities are strong and week against every pet I could face. It would help me a lot and I doubt I am alone. I currently have over 3500 pvp wins.

I don't find screen space to be very important in pvp pet battles. I have add-on’s running that take up more than that much screen space right now and it's not a problem.

Maybe you could make it a module that you can turn on or turn off.

[Arles]

Hi,
Great looking addon. did you end up releasing it to the public? its exactly what im looking for.

[Hazal]

Hi,
Great looking addon. did you end up releasing it to the public? its exactly what im looking for.

Sorry for slow response.
I stopped working on it. It works pretty well but I don't like how it looks and if I would end up releasing it I would want to almost completely rewrite the addon (code looks like a mess).
I'm just not passionate enough about pet battles anymore. If anything changes I will update in the main post.
But TL;DR: It's not released. And probably won't be anytime soon.

[Jester]

Too bad man, an addon like this would have totally been a little asskicker (to quote The Walking Dead)
I hope you'll change your mind someday and rejoin the pet battles side, we have cookies

[Helbrecht]

Just FYI, the PetTracker addon includes this functionality.

[Hazal]

Just FYI, the PetTracker addon includes this functionality.

Sounds awesome. When I initially started making this addon I remember I checked out other peoples addons and nobody else had something that worked like mine does now. But I do remember that the author of PetTracker actually had started working on something back then.

[Arles]

Yer, after looking around a bit, I decided to try pet tracker.

One of the functions is pretty much the same as your addon, pet tracker also has a bunch of other things, some helpful, some not.

If you have battle pet breed I'd, you need to disenable the breed function or you can get tool tip conflicts, and even with the pet tracker breed function un-ticked, it still effects battle pet breed I'd for me.

But pet tracker is doing the job for now.

Thanks for the reply.

[Helbrecht]

Yeah, I've noticed that same problem, though not always. Most of the time it works fine with the breed module turned off. I only use PetTracker for the enemy abilities and switcher, so it'd be nice if I could get just those as a standalone mod. I like the way BattlePet Breed ID displays breeds much more. But in the meantime, at least there's something available.