What is the difference between BigWigs and DBM?

[tordenflesk]

Is there a way to have Bigwigs play the DBM countdown voice?

Tick the box for the timer you want emphasized in BW's options.

[funkydude]

Is there a way to have Bigwigs play the DBM countdown voice?

Big Wigs introduced the countdown feature way before DBM ripped it. As already mentioned you can actually enable this on whatever ability you wish. It's completely up to you.

working out of the box, and performance are completely different . something can suck up a huge amount of memory, but its its easy to use for a beginner, people will often use it over a more efficient alternative with a steeper learning curve. the minute i installed dbm it put bars in places i liked, it took me a good half an hour of moving bigwigs bars around and fiddling with fonts to get something that dbm did the moment i installed it.

Honestly, it feels like you didn't read what I said at all:
I made a specific emphasis on CPU usage, not memory usage. The former is critical to your in-game FPS, the latter is not.
I elaborated on how the BW config is better, I'm not sure what you're getting at with "half an hour of moving bigwigs bars around and fiddling with fonts". To repeat myself: You click 1 button called "configure" and everything is right in front of you. All the anchors for moving bars, messages, etc, as well as the simple dropdown for selecting font. With DBM I had to hunt for the ability to move the bars for at least 10 minutes.

its only more advanced users care about minimal resource footprint.

Well, "care about" and "know about" are two different things. I wonder how many people would start caring if they knew?

timers are timers, doesn't matter if they are pve or pvp, their cognitive function remains the same.

Deadly Boss Mods. Big Wigs Boss Mods. They are not called Deadly Timer Mods or Big Wigs Timer Mods.

You wouldn't buy an oven and expect it to be a microwave just because they both cook food. Why do you expect a Boss Mod to be a PvP mod just because they both create bars?

By that logic, why aren't we creating bars for everything? Maybe we should create cast bars for you and everyone in the raid, they are technically timer bars. How about bars for when your profession cooldowns come off or bars for when the next Darkmoon faire will arrive?

This is the logic you're trying to use to justify having PvP timers in a boss mod.

One of the very first things you learn in software development is scope of the project. Not knowing the scope of your project leads to bloat.
Again, BW is a Boss Mod. That means any kind of modifications or code related to boss encounters can be implemented.

not having pvp timers in it is the ONLY reason i'm not using your addon, simple as that. your talk of a lower memory consumption for bigwigs vs dbm is completely negated by the fact that i would have to run another addon for pvp timers.

Well I'm afraid we're just going to have to agree to disagree. I'm never going to throw away basic software principles just to save you downloading another addon. ESPECIALLY when other addons to it 10x better: http://www.curse.com/addons/wow/capping-bg-timers

If you feel the extreme amount of CPU DBM uses and the FPS you're loosing ingame justifies the "extreme" amount of time it takes to download another addon, that's completely up to you.

Just to quote what I said earlier:

The following was captured during the "Council of Elders" encounter. This fight is substantially heavy for boss mods and a good example to use to see the average combat CPU usage.

If we combine the addons together, it adds to a total of (lower is better)

• DBM: 21.2 CPU/sec
• BW: 3.7 CPU/sec

So, what are the results after the entire LFR was over? Lets add up the addons again (lower is better)

• DBM: 26763 (27k)
• BW: 6212 (6k)

[Deleted]

The only reason I use DBM at the minute is because I can make WeakAuras trigger from it.

[funkydude]

The only reason I use DBM at the minute is because I can make WeakAuras trigger from it.

In Big Wigs v4 we introduced the "Pulse" feature. This is a very "Weak Auras style" alert in the sense that it throws a massive texture block at you for whatever abilities you enable it on. Hopefully it reduces the need/want to have WA throw things at you concerning boss abilities on you.

That being said, can you elaborate a bit on this? I don't use WA, so is this a feature built into WA that I need to look into? BW provides callbacks for all events that other addons can use if they wish (similarly to DBM). Are you using DBM callbacks in WA to implement this? If so, the same could be accomplished with BW.

[shadofall]

i've been back and forth for years. currently waiting to see wich gets the warlock green fire boss in first. i think i left BW the last time when it just started growing in to so many modules but i do see that its been slimmed back to just being core/expansion modules.

course its all in the name. everyone knows popularity is driven by the name. and DBM does have the cooler name :P

[seijo]

I've tried both this tier and DBM does seem like a more set it and forget it (easier out of box) experience. The sound (5,4,3,2,1) notification is set automatically for certain abilities already.

But with that said I needed more customization and needed to fine tune which abilities are emphasized especially since I switched over to disc priest and needed to keep an eye out for very specific abilities to time with SS,bubbles,etc. Bigwigs seems to have more options for customizing but I do notice nothing's really emphasized for you out of box. Meaning if you relied on those sound countdowns that were set before in DBM, you'll need to go in and set it yourself out of box. Found out the hard way when my ambershaper construct was blowing up the raid when I switched to BigWigs. That said, it does seem like a bigger payoff with Bigwigs assuming you get into the nitty gritty of the options and finetune which abilities to emphasize etc.

One question though... is there a way for BigWigs bars to move across the screen when they go from the small to big bar stack? In dbm, you see the bar literally fly across to the emphasized stack whereas my Bigwigs just disappears from the small stack, then reappears on the big stack. That movement often subtly draws my attention better to the bars when my eyes are already on something.

[funkydude]

I've tried both this tier and DBM does seem like a more set it and forget it (easier out of box) experience. The sound (5,4,3,2,1) notification is set automatically for certain abilities already.

But with that said I needed more customization and needed to fine tune which abilities are emphasized especially since I switched over to disc priest and needed to keep an eye out for very specific abilities to time with SS,bubbles,etc. Bigwigs seems to have more options for customizing but I do notice nothing's really emphasized for you out of box. Meaning if you relied on those sound countdowns that were set before in DBM, you'll need to go in and set it yourself out of box. Found out the hard way when my ambershaper construct was blowing up the raid when I switched to BigWigs. That said, it does seem like a bigger payoff with Bigwigs assuming you get into the nitty gritty of the options and finetune which abilities to emphasize etc.

It's a balancing issue. Enable something seriously intrusive like a voice countdown for someone who may not want it and doesn't know how to turn it off, or leave it off for everything and tell people to enable it for whatever they want. We just chose the off-by-default approach due to the intrusive nature of the feature.

One question though... is there a way for BigWigs bars to move across the screen when they go from the small to big bar stack? In dbm, you see the bar literally fly across to the emphasized stack whereas my Bigwigs just disappears from the small stack, then reappears on the big stack. That movement often subtly draws my attention better to the bars when my eyes are already on something.

Funnily enough when we came up with the idea of having a separate anchor for short bars during Burning Crusade (before DBM ripped it) we also had "flying bars" that would move across. When we re-wrote Big Wigs for v3 it was decided that it would be more beneficial performance-wise to remove it unfortunately

currently waiting to see wich gets the warlock green fire boss in first.

Ask and you shall receive! I just implemented a boss module for it in Little Wigs (sister addon for sub-raid content). It's currently in alpha and I'll probably release it tomorrow. I'll post an update on release. If you'd like to use it now, simply install the alpha version of Little Wigs via Curse Client or WoWAce.

[Deleted]

In Big Wigs v4 we introduced the "Pulse" feature. This is a very "Weak Auras style" alert in the sense that it throws a massive texture block at you for whatever abilities you enable it on. Hopefully it reduces the need/want to have WA throw things at you concerning boss abilities on you.

That being said, can you elaborate a bit on this? I don't use WA, so is this a feature built into WA that I need to look into? BW provides callbacks for all events that other addons can use if they wish (similarly to DBM). Are you using DBM callbacks in WA to implement this? If so, the same could be accomplished with BW.

I play mistweaver, any reliably timed AoE damage such as Quake Stomp on tortos I need to anticipate 14 or so seconds before it happens. No real way to do that while not being distracted from the actual encounter by gazing at bars.

[Spike`]

The problem of Bigwigs on the past has been two things, slower releases with translates to bad timers duo to hotfixes changes and no 5 man support and that is what is on players/guild minds

now you are really focusing on it and its really nice, 5 man you have now a notice to download littlewigs, before almost no-one knew about it

personally i think that you should at least pack bigwigs and littlewigs together, most players just want a bossmod set to them out of the box, only Healers and maybe tanks care about personalization, DPS is just install and forget.

so in the end 85% of the raiders dont care about CPU/Memory, just it displays big screen alerts to them wherever they fight a boss (raid, 5man or worldboss), even more now that is really noticeable the number of players becoming Social and just do LFR and level ALTs, so packing them both will be good start for making Bigwigs more popular

PVP module is also out of a Bossmod in my opinion

[funkydude]

the only problem i can see with bigwigs is i have NEVER gotten old expansion encounter timers to work.

Currently _Classic and _BurningCrusade should work fine, unfortunately _WrathOfTheLichKing and _Cataclysm haven't been updated for BW v4 because I ran out of time before 5.2 released. I will update them soon but it is extremely time consuming and I've been prioritizing other things. I'll have some time to work on them this weekend.

I play mistweaver, any reliably timed AoE damage such as Quake Stomp on tortos I need to anticipate 14 or so seconds before it happens. No real way to do that while not being distracted from the actual encounter by gazing at bars.

I can't say it will work for you but what I do in such situations is change the color of the bar. When you have a bunch of bars coloured the same and 1 important bar coloured yellow or something it sticks out like a clown in a crowd. It makes quick glancing viable in situations with lots of bars (Unsok, etc). You can also change at which point a bar emphasizes to a bigger one to 14s or so.

But again, could you please explain how you're accomplishing this? Is it something you wrote, a separate addon, or a feature of WA?

[Shiny212]

DBM is alot more userfriendly, while bigwigs has more customizable features.

[jsz]

BigWigs convert here, I'll never go back to DBM. I'm a huge huge fan of customizability and well-written, polished code.

only Healers and maybe tanks care about personalization, DPS is just install and forget.

Maybe for LFR heroes and "that guy" in your raid that ends up dead in the dirt one minute into a boss fight.

[blackblade]

I've used both interchangably over the years.

Both will get the job done at the end of the day.

It's kind of funny, though, how heavily relied upon they are in the raiding community.

[Magally]

I've used both interchangably over the years.

Both will get the job done at the end of the day.

It's kind of funny, though, how heavily relied upon they are in the raiding community.

Well back yonder when most bosses pre-naxx consisted of a hilariously simple mechanics involving basically tank and spank with maybe a raid cast or a adds phase or a big hit, it wasn't hard to keep track of 1-2 things happening every 30 seconds.

Now you're going to be hard pressed to find a normal encounter that doesn't involve 10 different mechanics all working on a timer completely independent of each other.

When you're planning a phase or a cooldown and you need to know (in that previous Mistweaver's case above) 14 seconds before an ability hits, just staring at the chat box won't cut it. You need that timer telling you "Hey, 14 seconds until the AoE"

[Count Zero]

DBM is alot more userfriendly

I've been using DBM since early Naxx (Wrath version), and I only just installed BigWigs today (based on reading this thread last night), and I immediately was able to customize BW more easily than I can DBM.

One LFR with BW and I'm pretty much sold on it. I could tell from performance that it doesn't use nearly the resources DBM does. I'll try it out for our real raid Sunday, and if it's all good there ... I'm completely sold on it.

[kosechi]

Big Wigs introduced the countdown feature way before DBM ripped it. As already mentioned you can actually enable this on whatever ability you wish. It's completely up to you.



Honestly, it feels like you didn't read what I said at all:
I made a specific emphasis on CPU usage, not memory usage. The former is critical to your in-game FPS, the latter is not.
I elaborated on how the BW config is better, I'm not sure what you're getting at with "half an hour of moving bigwigs bars around and fiddling with fonts". To repeat myself: You click 1 button called "configure" and everything is right in front of you. All the anchors for moving bars, messages, etc, as well as the simple dropdown for selecting font. With DBM I had to hunt for the ability to move the bars for at least 10 minutes.



Well, "care about" and "know about" are two different things. I wonder how many people would start caring if they knew?



Deadly Boss Mods. Big Wigs Boss Mods. They are not called Deadly Timer Mods or Big Wigs Timer Mods.

You wouldn't buy an oven and expect it to be a microwave just because they both cook food. Why do you expect a Boss Mod to be a PvP mod just because they both create bars?

By that logic, why aren't we creating bars for everything? Maybe we should create cast bars for you and everyone in the raid, they are technically timer bars. How about bars for when your profession cooldowns come off or bars for when the next Darkmoon faire will arrive?

This is the logic you're trying to use to justify having PvP timers in a boss mod.

One of the very first things you learn in software development is scope of the project. Not knowing the scope of your project leads to bloat.
Again, BW is a Boss Mod. That means any kind of modifications or code related to boss encounters can be implemented.



Well I'm afraid we're just going to have to agree to disagree. I'm never going to throw away basic software principles just to save you downloading another addon. ESPECIALLY when other addons to it 10x better: http://www.curse.com/addons/wow/capping-bg-timers

If you feel the extreme amount of CPU DBM uses and the FPS you're loosing ingame justifies the "extreme" amount of time it takes to download another addon, that's completely up to you.

Just to quote what I said earlier:

i took me half an hour to get bigwigs running the way i wanted, dbm worked exactly the way i wanted it to right out of the box, when i did at one point want to move the bars it didn't take me 10 minutes to find the option to do it. maybe thats just me.

oh, and i don't know many raiders who DON'T run with cast bars and cooldown timers. maybe you should put those in too? knowing what my healer is casting, and what cooldowns he has is pretty important to me. so yes. timers are timers.

capping is terrible. it randomly loses timers, refuses to load timers, loads them incorrectly, and takes a hell of a lot of time to configure to not be super intrusive.

cpu usage is irrelevant to me, i don't see any fps difference between bigwigs an dbm, what i do get annoyed with is having to constantly disable and re enable addons when i transition from pvp to pve.

and i don't need to justify having pvp timers in a boss mod, dbm has pvp timers, bigwigs does not. therefor, i will not be using bigwigs, no matter how amazing it is, as long as it continues to not have pvp timers. i am not the only person who feels this way. not including pvp timers is probably stopping a lot of people from swapping to bigwigs because dbm has it.

[tordenflesk]

oh, and i don't know many raiders who DON'T run with cast bars and cooldown timers. maybe you should put those in too? knowing what my healer is casting, and what cooldowns he has is pretty important to me. so yes. timers are timers.

Why?
Castbars:
Quartz
Gnosis
azCastBar

Cooldowns:
Raven
WeakAuras
SexyCooldown

Just to name a few. BigWigs is a BOSSMOD! Take some personal responsibility and don't expect an addon to do everything for you.

cpu usage is irrelevant to me, i don't see any fps difference between bigwigs an dbm

Look at you, affording one of them there new-fangled computing-devices

what i do get annoyed with is having to constantly disable and re enable addons when i transition from pvp to pve.

Not related to BigWigs at all.

and i don't need to justify having pvp timers in a boss mod

Actually, you kinda have too, since the author doesn't see why on earth he would. Funkydude doesn't work for you.

[funkydude]

...

So yeah this is one of those times where we agree to disagree. Thanks for being honest and adding your opinion on the topic though. Curious what others that prefer DBM have to say.

currently waiting to see wich gets the warlock green fire boss in first.

http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...re)?p=20611662

[Deleted]

I can't say it will work for you but what I do in such situations is change the color of the bar. When you have a bunch of bars coloured the same and 1 important bar coloured yellow or something it sticks out like a clown in a crowd. It makes quick glancing viable in situations with lots of bars (Unsok, etc). You can also change at which point a bar emphasizes to a bigger one to 14s or so.

But again, could you please explain how you're accomplishing this? Is it something you wrote, a separate addon, or a feature of WA?

I can't really explain the lua as it was sourced from elsewhere,

function()
    local config = {};
    -- === CONFIG SETTINGS BEGIN ===
    -- id: Exact spellId used by the DBM timer creation code
    --    Can also be partially matched string contained in the localized
    --    bar title within DBM .lua (if no spell ID exists).
    local id = 137458;
    -- subId: Additional identifier to prevent timer corruption 
    --  if multiple triggers exist with the same "id" value.
    local subId = 0;     
    -- time: Time remaining at which to trigger (in seconds), can be
    --  decimal. If checkTimeElapsed = true, this is time elapsed at 
    --  which to trigger instead.  If zero or negative, time is
    --  automatically set to the total timer duration.
    config.time = 14;
    -- checkTimeElapsed: Default checks against time remaining before the
    --  timer ends. If you want to check against time elapsed instead, 
    --  change to "true".
    config.checkTimeElapsed = false;    
    -- duration: Duration the trigger should remain active before 
    --  untrigger, can be decimal. If set to default of 0 (zero), trigger
    --  expires when timer expires. If set to a positive value of say 5, 
    --  trigger will expire 5 seconds after trigger started, as specified
    --  by "time" above.
    config.duration = 3;   
    -- === CONFIG SETTINGS END ===
    if DBM then    
        local tId = id..subId;
        if not WeakAuras.CustomValues then WeakAuras.CustomValues = {}; end
        if not WeakAuras.CustomValues.DBMTimers then WeakAuras.CustomValues.DBMTimers = {}; end
        if not WeakAuras.CustomValues.DBMTimers[tId] then WeakAuras.CustomValues.DBMTimers[tId] = {}; end
        WeakAuras.CustomValues.DBMTimers[tId].config = config;
        if WeakAuras.CustomValues.DBMTimers[tId].fired then return false; end
        local bar;
        for b in DBM.Bars:GetBarIterator() do
            if strfind(b.id, id) then
                bar = b
            end
        end
        local tElapsed = bar and (bar.totalTime - bar.timer) or 0, (bar and bar.totalTime) or 0;
        local tRemaining = bar and (bar.timer) or 0, (bar and bar.totalTime) or 0;
        if bar then -- Bar exists
            if config.time <= 0 then config.time = bar.totalTime; end
            if config.checkTimeElapsed then -- Trigger if time elapsed > time
                if config.duration > 0 then
                    if tElapsed >= config.time and tElapsed <= (config.time + config.duration) then
                        WeakAuras.CustomValues.DBMTimers[tId].fired = true;
                        return true;
                    end
                elseif tElapsed >= config.time then
                    WeakAuras.CustomValues.DBMTimers[tId].fired = true;
                    return true;
                end
            else -- Trigger if time remaining < time
                if config.duration > 0 then
                    if tRemaining <= config.time and tRemaining > (config.time - config.duration) then
                        WeakAuras.CustomValues.DBMTimers[tId].fired = true;
                        return true;
                    end
                elseif tRemaining <= config.time then
                    WeakAuras.CustomValues.DBMTimers[tId].fired = true;
                    return true;
                end
            end
        end
    end
    return false;
end

Basically that's a custom trigger which activates 14 seconds before Dire Call on Horridon Heroic and lasts for 3 seconds. Bar colour changing really doesn't help either, I did try it but I still needed to monitor when it ticks 14 seconds and it's a lot easier on my head to have a 3 second "Press your buttons idiot" icon on my screen than to constantly monitor it.

[funkydude]

Unfortunately I've never used WA before, so it took me a while to figure out how to create a texture that uses this script. I think you're having it check on every frame? Anyway here is a script you can use with Big Wigs. Unfortunately I don't know if I was using the wrong type (texture) but the 2 issues I noticed were: 1) It would only ever display once and 2) it would never hide. Do you also have more scripts set to that texture?

Here it is anyway, you can set the bar name to one of the test bars:

function()
    -- === CONFIG SETTINGS BEGIN ===
    -- barName: Exact bar name used by Big Wigs
    local barName = "Barkskin";
    local config = WeakAuras.CustomValues and WeakAuras.CustomValues.BWTimers and WeakAuras.CustomValues.BWTimers[barName] and WeakAuras.CustomValues.BWTimers[barName].config or {};
    -- time: Time remaining at which to trigger (in seconds), can be
    --  decimal. If zero or negative, time is
    --  automatically set to the total timer duration.
    config.time = 10;
    -- duration: Duration the trigger should remain active before
    --  untrigger, can be decimal. If set to default of 0 (zero), trigger
    --  expires when timer expires. If set to a positive value of say 5,
    --  trigger will expire 5 seconds after trigger started, as specified
    --  by "time" above.
    config.duration = 3;
    -- === CONFIG SETTINGS END ===
    if BigWigsAnchor then
        if not WeakAuras.CustomValues then WeakAuras.CustomValues = {}; end
        if not WeakAuras.CustomValues.BWTimers then WeakAuras.CustomValues.BWTimers = {}; end
        if not WeakAuras.CustomValues.BWTimers[barName] then WeakAuras.CustomValues.BWTimers[barName] = {}; end
        if not WeakAuras.CustomValues.BWTimers[barName].config then WeakAuras.CustomValues.BWTimers[barName].config = config; end
        if WeakAuras.CustomValues.BWTimers[barName].fired then return false; end
        local bar;
        for b in next, BigWigsAnchor.bars do
            if b.candyBarLabel:GetText() == barName then
                bar = b
                break
            end
        end
        if not bar and BigWigsEmphasizeAnchor then
            for b in next, BigWigsEmphasizeAnchor.bars do
                if b.candyBarLabel:GetText() == barName then
                    bar = b
                    break
                end
            end
        end
        if bar then -- Bar exists
            if config.time <= 0 then
                local min, max = bar:GetMinMaxValues()
                config.time = max - min
            end
            -- Trigger if time remaining < time
            if config.duration > 0 then
                if bar.remaining <= config.time and bar.remaining > (config.time - config.duration) then
                    WeakAuras.CustomValues.BWTimers[barName].fired = true;
                    return true;
                end
            elseif bar.remaining <= config.time then
                WeakAuras.CustomValues.BWTimers[barName].fired = true;
                return true;
            end
        end
    end
    return false;
end