editor’s note: Please put your hands together again for the newest OutDPS writer, Shadowstreak! You might know of him as the artist for the Frostheim Goggles comic, over at WHU. If not, go check it out- it’s some funny stuff!
There are a few different DoT/Proc timing mods available. They all have their own different pros and cons and different selling points. Some of which might actually influence which one players end up settling with.
Hunters in their own aren’t all about the DoTs. We have Serpent Sting and that’s just about it. Unlike marks hunters with Chimera Shot, its much more vital for survival and BM hunters to track the duration of SS so they can refresh it on their own when it runs low.
But despite our lack of billions of DoTs, we have to actually work for our dps and not just sit back and let the numbers tick over! That poses the question, why do we even need a DoT timer if SV and BM hunters are just tracking their Serpent Stings? There are a few other things that can be done with DoT timers. One particular thing that I’ve grown to like is to actually track Hunters Mark on the target. Its useful in the long fights that last more then 5 minutes to know when its about to run out so you can refresh it in time where you can waste a GCD.
But the main use I’ve found for DoT timers is to actually track your own proc. Combine this with PowerAuras (which I will get to in another post) and you can tell when you get the proc and how long it has until it leaves you small and weak again! Most DoT timers simply work by tracking the debuff’s duration on you’re target. So all you really have to do to track procs is just to make the target yourself and to change the tracking from “Debuff” to “Buff” and you’ve got a proc timer!
But enough of that, lets get down too it.
ForteXorcist
ForteXorcist is a pretty powerful addon which is mainly directed at warlocks, yet has a very nice DoT timer as well as a few other features for the other classes. This mod enables you to track all the DoTs you have on you’re target, as well as all the dots you’ve cast over other targets, basically tracking all of your dots.
Looks wise, this mod is just downright sexy. Has a nice animation when you cast the dot and when it runs out. The mod also had a very nice cooldown timer. You might have seen similar or even the same mod in videos or screenshots of interfaces, but its basically the bar with the abilities’ icons scrolling along to the end of said bar indicating when the ability is ready to be used again.
The main issue I had with this mod is that it is horrible to set up. You can more or less customise every single aspect of the mod, to the point where it becomes annoying and frustrating. Though it has a nice interface, it still took me a good couple of hours to get just how I wanted.
Need To Know
The next mod I’ll be talking about is NeedToKnow. This is just generally a very nice and stable mod, and is what I’m using right now. I did have ForteXorcist for a long time, but swapped to NeedToKnow. The main feature that NTK has over other mods is the ability to make multiple DoT timing windows or boxes. You can even have one box for you’re dots, and a separate box for you’re procs! That’s what I do :).
This is a very basic and simple mod, yet it sacrifices nothing in terms of performance. It is very easy to set up and configure, yet still allows you to mess around with pretty much every detail to get it just to how you like it.
Another major feature to the mod, one which I’ve only recently become aware of, is the ability to track the internal cooldown of abilities. This more or less makes this the selling point of the add-on.
Inline Aura
Lastly, Inline Aura is a DoT timing mod, but instead of popping a depleting bar up on the screen, it puts a timer on the ability (which looks a lot like OmniCC) to represent when the DoT will expire on the target. Right out of the box the mod works really nicely. Without any setting up, it correctly tracked my SS and HM on the target. You also had the ability to change text size, font, color, etc.
However issue to be aware of is that Inline Auras doesn’t play nice with OmniCC. 2 different numbers over your abilities? I’d rather the depleting bar! Inline Aura and OmniCC are both configurable enough to get around this issue with not much difficulty, however it really doesn’t have anything that the other mods don’t have other then looks.
Tip of the iceberg
I’ll also give a shout out to a few other DoT timing mods out there. These mods do track dots, yet really as far as I know don’t have any major selling points like the 3 I’ve listed so far.
- Kharthus’s Hunter Timers is one of those mods that do track our DoTs yet has no major selling feature other then the fact that its a hunter timer. Although the addon being a “Hunter Timer” seems rather gimmicky, as hunters really have no unique, super special, super unique Dots with magical mechanics or things that need a specific mod to track. The lack of any other features with this mod also doesn’t serve to make it any more desirable then the 3 mods listed above.
- DoTimer is a mod that I’ve had no experience with. Never used it, never downloaded it, never tampered with it, yet seems like a pretty good mod. Just from what I’ve read though, the main mods I listed seemed to cover all the features, as well as adding their own little twists. If you do know a thing or two about DoTimer, don’t hesitate to comment it and I’ll edit this post :)
-Shadow
“your”
Hey shadowstreak and welcome. Great post and I totally agree about fortexorcist. I only keep it because it tracks my serpent stings on all targets, not just my current one, which makes it very handy
I use TellMeWhen to track all my my buffs, debuffs, and cooldowns. It’s pretty briliant, and can be found on curse or wowinterface.
I use DoTimer on all of my toons. I find it to work very well. I tracks everything you need like the time left on dot’s to the cool down. For example, Ophirra is survival and when I use Explosive Shot it pops up the target with black arrow and whatever other thing I use and has the duration, including the duration of the explosive shot. I have it configured so on the left hand of my icehud i have the cool down times and on the right side i have the duration of the dots/abilities. you can do more with it than that but I found different mods work better like quartz for casting timers and morganti buff bars for my buffs/debuffs. Nice post as usual, I might have to try some of those out.
Nice one. But one question. Are there any addons showing me the swing timer for the autoshot? I normaly use quartz. But in my case the addon, especially the swing timer, is kind of buggy. Sometimes it is showing in the right way – sometimes not. I know Kharthus’s Hunter Timers have also an integrated swing timer. But I search for an addon which I can configure more comfortable. I just want to see the swing timer on a big “castbar” in the screen – nothing else. Thanks for your help.
I have heard that Gnosis is a good cast bar addon with a swing timer.
I use Quartz and thats never screwed up for me. Have you tried updating yours? It might be out of date.
I use Gnosis for my castbars, and can attest that the Ranged Swing timer is very accurate. It’s a bit more trouble to set up compared to Quartz, but it’s also a lighter weight addon overall (while still including things like Tradeskill Merge.)
In terms of DoT tracking, nightcracker also put out ncDebuffTimer. Although there is limited configurability (anchor, growth direction, size), it still manages to include such features as tracking debuffs across multiple mobs with very low overhead compared to ForteXorcist.
One thing that was skipped in the description of NeedToKnow, and that I don’t think ForteXorcist supports, is the ability to have items tracked appear in the exact same position at all times.
Recently the author of NeedToKnow implemented an Auto Shot timer in the addon.
Yes, you can track Auto Shot as a Spell Cooldown now. It looks like it works well.
AzCastBar, along with the Az Cast Bar Plugin pack, has a fantastic swing timer that works flawlessly. I was used Quartz as my cast bar mod as well previously, but the swing timer would glitch out and not work well for my auto shots. ACB works wonderfully, and has most, if not more, of the functionality quartz does.
The only one I know of is Quartz like you mentioned. I personally dont care for the swing timer or the GCD timer (that you can also use in Quartz), but I am starting to depend on it more and more as I play my hunter almost full time now.
Tellmewhen and powerauras = great combo.
I was using KHT for a swing timer for a while until I realized it was causing these annoying hiccups when looting. Quartz is far better for that purpose but it seems like the latency option is inaccurate and it’s a bit bloated. I too would like just a clean and simple swing timer.
Maybe I misunderstood your comment, but if you play around with Quartz options you can obtain a moveable and simple swing timer without text frills.
You did misunderstand me. Point I was making was that I don’t like using 5% of an addon. I like keeping resources to a minimum as I’m not on the greatest comp.
Quartz seems to be buggy at the moment. I was setting it up for an alt last night and disabled the pet and focus cast bars, but could not get them off screen without relogging. A lot of bug reports on Curse for this now too, which is a pity because it’s a really useful add on.
NeedToKnow is fantastic. I heartily recommend it. I use it for monitoring trinkets, dots, select buffs, mend pet and pet abilities like Shell Shield.
You guys need to check out the addon called Watcher. Its a great addon for hunters and keeps track of DoTs, CDs, etc. all on a handy timeline bar. You can even set it up to tell you when to switch to Viper and DH. Check it out on curse.com
Gotta disagree on Inline Aura and OmniCC. I installed them both long ago and never tweaked a single thing, worked perfectly out of the box and are AMAZING together to this day.
That said, I also use Satrina Buff Frames to track my “power” abilities and procs, like Greatness or Icy whatever.
Well in my case I have been running OmniCC for AGES. Few years now probably, so I might have tweaked some things along the way. I just saw one number on top of another number :). Gets a little confusing for one whose not use to looking at that.
Needtoknow is fantastic just for the ability to split the tracking up into different boxes. As a rogue I like to see my blind bar in a different area than say, my gouge or sheep.
On my hunter its great for tracking serpent sting on multiple mobs.
Can Need To Know track Serpent Sting on multiple Mobs? Even if the mob is not your target or focus? If yes, then I can dump ForteXorcist, which is a nice addon but overkill for my Hunter and too hard to setup.
As far as I know, even with some research and messing around. There is no way for NeedtoKnow to track DoTs on multiple mobs, only on what you’re targeting. If there IS a way though, that would be very interesting. Other then the cool down timer, the multiple mob feature is the main reason people cling to FortExorcist.
That’s a pity, because I like that add on a lot. Maybe I should put in a feature request with the developer…