Request for more Healer based information in Combat logs

[Sprin]

<p>This is simply a request for the developers to look into the addition of (mostly) healer based information into the combat logs to help ACT or other programs monitor things other then just "heal ammounts"</p><p>There is really so much useless information in Combat logs now as it is, things like... "Your group feels a sense of Awe wash over it" or something.. the stuff in the blue and the green writing, that provides no information other then clutter the combat log with "lore" aspects..... or whatever that stuff is for.  Please replace these items with more usefull ones:</p><p>Items i would like to see placed into combat logs:</p><p><strong>Cures</strong></p><p>IE:"Healer1 has cured Groupmember1 of Strike of the Ethernauts" etc... </p><p>As that is insanely usefull to a parse.. how many times did Healer1 cure, who did they cure, what effects did they cure them of, and how many times did they cure it.... ACT could easily pick that information up and spew it out at us.  We can look at it, find out what the debuff "would have done" to the group had they not cured it and either spank em verbally or praise them for doing a great job.</p><p><strong>Debuffs:</strong></p><p>IE: "Healer1 cripples A Large Roosterdragon with Debuff1" etc...</p><p>Which would allow again ACT to pick up information that would be usefull. You can tell that your healers arent just sitting there and doing nothing, if their Heal parse is low, maybe they didnt have anyone to heal but they are curing and debuffing the junk out of the mob and the raid / group members, but nobody can really tell... other then if it wipes the group / raid because they DIDNT cure specific things.</p><p>Time stamps on those cures would be insanely usefull too.. what healer / group member is taking too long to cure a detrimental effect (perhaps fail condition) effect off them?  If you know "AOE ATTACK1" hit everone at 1:30:30 and Healer1 didnt cure "AOE ATTACK1" from Groupmember1 until 1:30:45, you can tell things...</p><p>Please consider dropping the "lore" green and blue text in combat log (whatever that stuff is) and replace it with usefull information.</p><p>I'm sure its complicated to get all of the cures in there.... and debuffs from atacks that also do damage dont need to be in there, as the attack is already listed with the damage, so one could easily find out how the mob was debuffed by looknig at the spell"</p><p>But spells that have 0 damage, but provide a great debuff dont get counted, so its impossible to keep track of those things.</p><p>Please consider this</p>

[Baccalarium]

<p>Yes being able to see cures other than your own would be nice.   Would be good for post analysis and realizing the player that hadn't been listening to instructions about the cures.</p><p>Debuffs are in that flavor text I think.   For example:</p><p>(1244076112)[Wed Jun 03 19:41:52 2009] You ask the ancestors to delay your foes.(1244076112)[Wed Jun 03 19:41:52 2009] Khost Alur moves ponderously.</p><p>I'm fairly sure is the haze line debuff landing.</p><p>(1244076114)[Wed Jun 03 19:41:54 2009] You channel a spirit of mourning into Khost Alur!(1244076114)[Wed Jun 03 19:41:54 2009] Khost Alur is overcome with sadness!</p><p>Is the dps debuf landing.</p><p>But I doubt anyone else's log has the first line.</p><p>Yes a message like</p><p>Baccalarium hinders Khost Alur with Mourning Soul, or Baccalarium slows Khost Alur with Haze</p><p>would be a lot more useful than</p><p>Khost Alur moves ponderously.</p>

[Banditman]

<p>Honestly, you know what needs to happen?  Someone needs to write a healer specific parser.  How quickly was debuff X applied to the mob.  Was it maintained constantly or were there gaps?  How many deaths were there?  How many cures?</p><p>I know what needs to be in a healer parser, I simply lack the programming expertise to pull one off in real time.</p><p>Certainly, I'd love to see better healer information in the logs, but I see that as only the first step in the process of getting truly useful and constructive healer information presented.</p>

[Sprin]

<p><cite>Baccalarium wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Yes being able to see cures other than your own would be nice.   Would be good for post analysis and realizing the player that hadn't been listening to instructions about the cures.</p><p>Debuffs are in that flavor text I think.   For example:</p><p>(1244076112)[Wed Jun 03 19:41:52 2009] You ask the ancestors to delay your foes.(1244076112)[Wed Jun 03 19:41:52 2009] Khost Alur moves ponderously.</p><p>I'm fairly sure is the haze line debuff landing.</p><p>(1244076114)[Wed Jun 03 19:41:54 2009] You channel a spirit of mourning into Khost Alur!(1244076114)[Wed Jun 03 19:41:54 2009] Khost Alur is overcome with sadness!</p><p>Is the dps debuf landing.</p><p>But I doubt anyone else's log has the first line.</p><p>Yes a message like</p><p>Baccalarium hinders Khost Alur with Mourning Soul, or Baccalarium slows Khost Alur with Haze</p><p>would be a lot more useful than</p><p>Khost Alur moves ponderously.</p></blockquote><p>Yeah the blue and green text have something to do with buffs, but they sure dont specify anything, which makes them completely useless as far as ACT or any other program.....  and sort of goes against any argument that it would be too many lines of text to do the cures... there is fluff in there anyways that can easily be taken out and replaced.</p>

[Sprin]

<p><cite>Banditman wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Honestly, you know what needs to happen?  Someone needs to write a healer specific parser.  How quickly was debuff X applied to the mob.  Was it maintained constantly or were there gaps?  How many deaths were there?  How many cures?</p><p>I know what needs to be in a healer parser, I simply lack the programming expertise to pull one off in real time.</p><p>Certainly, I'd love to see better healer information in the logs, but I see that as only the first step in the process of getting truly useful and constructive healer information presented.</p></blockquote><p>Well ACT can do all that, the problem is ACT reads Combat Logs.. And SOE doesnt have anything in the combat log to read, so once it does, that will solve the problems...</p><p>ACT will be able to read how many times someone cures someoneelse, will be able to log what time the cures took place etc... so you can compare them manually to the effect that caused it to see the delay or im sure an ACT plugin could be made to do that easily.  Problem is that information isnt in there to begin with, so theres nothing for ACT to read.</p>

[Banditman]

<p>The difference is that ACT can already do a lot of that, it simply "doesn't" do it.</p><p>It could parse debuffs if it chose . . . it does not.</p><p>It could parse deaths if it chose . . . it does not.</p><p>ACT was written from the ground up with one purpose - to track damage dealt.  Sure, over time it added other things, but at it's core, it tracks damage.  It's "purpose" if you will is to measure the damage, both dealt and received.  As a collateral benefit, it measures heals.</p><p>What I'm proposing is something built from the ground up to measure the efficiency of a healer.</p><p>I could easily write one to do this on completed log, I simply can't do the parsing in real time.</p><p>As I said above, there are certainly other things I'd like to see put in the logs, but to really measure the effectiveness of a healer, I think the parser needs to be written from the ground up as a parser specifically for a Priest.</p>

[Sprin]

<p><cite>Banditman wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>The difference is that ACT can already do a lot of that, it simply "doesn't" do it.</p><p>It could parse debuffs if it chose . . . it does not.</p><p>It could parse deaths if it chose . . . it does not.</p></blockquote><p>Debuffs cant be parsed because the debuff isnt specifically listed, nor is the person who cast it usually.</p><p>"Khost Alur is overcome with sadness!" doesnt say what it was debuffed with or who debuffed him, so its of no value in the current state...</p><p>Deaths.. meh... Deaths in a raid are obvious...  how many times and how often a Mystic through up their STA debuff is not however...</p><p>ACT cant do that stuff because SOE hasnt given it the tools to do it. </p><p>The only times i have ever seen a non damage buff listed in a combat log is when you get pulled into PVP combat</p><p>"You have entered into PVP combat by casting "totem of the wolf"..............."</p>

[EQAditu]

<p><cite>Banditman wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>The difference is that ACT can already do a lot of that, it simply "doesn't" do it.</p><p>It could parse debuffs if it chose . . . it does not.</p><p>It could parse deaths if it chose . . . it does not.</p><p>ACT was written from the ground up with one purpose - to track damage dealt.  Sure, over time it added other things, but at it's core, it tracks damage.  It's "purpose" if you will is to measure the damage, both dealt and received.  As a collateral benefit, it measures heals.</p><p>What I'm proposing is something built from the ground up to measure the efficiency of a healer.</p><p>I could easily write one to do this on completed log, I simply can't do the parsing in real time.</p><p>As I said above, there are certainly other things I'd like to see put in the logs, but to really measure the effectiveness of a healer, I think the parser needs to be written from the ground up as a parser specifically for a Priest.</p></blockquote><p>You have a lot of strange assumptions about my program.  Especially when I bothered to write an about page on the website.  I also like your style of writing where it sounds like ACT is its own master and chooses what it will do. <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/69934afc394145350659cd7add244ca9.gif" border="0" /></p><p>I'd be absolutely astonished if you ever had a version of ACT that did not track killing blows.  I'd be plainly surprised if you knew how many years ago it was added.</p><p>If you want to collect the landing/fading/casting emotes for every single debuff in the game, be my guest.  But don't say that it could be easily done.  I know exactly how much work it would be to collect that many emotes for every spell.  The React Heal Status plugin has a collection of over 50 emotes it tracks to accomplish its goals.  Even so, it doesn't even attempt to do something as difficult as match casting messages to landing messages to determine who is casting things.</p><p>Cures are just as difficult if not worse.  If you didn't do the curing, you have little idea if it was successful.</p>

[Sprin]

<p><cite>EQAditu wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Banditman wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>The difference is that ACT can already do a lot of that, it simply "doesn't" do it.</p><p>It could parse debuffs if it chose . . . it does not.</p><p>It could parse deaths if it chose . . . it does not.</p><p>ACT was written from the ground up with one purpose - to track damage dealt.  Sure, over time it added other things, but at it's core, it tracks damage.  It's "purpose" if you will is to measure the damage, both dealt and received.  As a collateral benefit, it measures heals.</p><p>What I'm proposing is something built from the ground up to measure the efficiency of a healer.</p><p>I could easily write one to do this on completed log, I simply can't do the parsing in real time.</p><p>As I said above, there are certainly other things I'd like to see put in the logs, but to really measure the effectiveness of a healer, I think the parser needs to be written from the ground up as a parser specifically for a Priest.</p></blockquote><p>You have a lot of strange assumptions about my program.  Especially when I bothered to write an about page on the website.  I also like your style of writing where it sounds like ACT is its own master and chooses what it will do. <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/69934afc394145350659cd7add244ca9.gif" border="0" /></p><p>I'd be absolutely astonished if you ever had a version of ACT that did not track killing blows.  I'd be plainly surprised if you knew how many years ago it was added.</p><p>If you want to collect the landing/fading/casting emotes for every single debuff in the game, be my guest.  But don't say that it could be easily done.  I know exactly how much work it would be to collect that many emotes for every spell.  The React Heal Status plugin has a collection of over 50 emotes it tracks to accomplish its goals.  Even so, it doesn't even attempt to do something as difficult as match casting messages to landing messages to determine who is casting things.</p><p>Cures are just as difficult if not worse.  If you didn't do the curing, you have little idea if it was successful.</p></blockquote><p>Thats why an update from SOE to include this info would be wonderful.....</p><p>3:31:12 "Sprinng Cures Billybob of Noxious Gas"</p><p>3:31:13 "Sprinng cripples Zarrakon with Tashiana"</p><p>Would solve the problems? would it not?...</p>

[Arielle Nightshade]

<p><cite>EQAditu wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Banditman wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>The difference is that ACT can already do a lot of that, it simply "doesn't" do it.</p><p>It could parse debuffs if it chose . . . it does not.</p><p>It could parse deaths if it chose . . . it does not.</p><p>ACT was written from the ground up with one purpose - to track damage dealt.  Sure, over time it added other things, but at it's core, it tracks damage.  It's "purpose" if you will is to measure the damage, both dealt and received.  As a collateral benefit, it measures heals.</p><p>What I'm proposing is something built from the ground up to measure the efficiency of a healer.</p><p>I could easily write one to do this on completed log, I simply can't do the parsing in real time.</p><p>As I said above, there are certainly other things I'd like to see put in the logs, but to really measure the effectiveness of a healer, I think the parser needs to be written from the ground up as a parser specifically for a Priest.</p></blockquote><p>You have a lot of strange assumptions about my program.  Especially when I bothered to write an about page on the website.  I also like your style of writing where it sounds like ACT is its own master and chooses what it will do. <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/69934afc394145350659cd7add244ca9.gif" border="0" /></p><p>I'd be absolutely astonished if you ever had a version of ACT that did not track killing blows.  I'd be plainly surprised if you knew how many years ago it was added.</p><p>If you want to collect the landing/fading/casting emotes for every single debuff in the game, be my guest.  But don't say that it could be easily done.  I know exactly how much work it would be to collect that many emotes for every spell.  The React Heal Status plugin has a collection of over 50 emotes it tracks to accomplish its goals.  Even so, it doesn't even attempt to do something as difficult as match casting messages to landing messages to determine who is casting things.</p><p>Cures are just as difficult if not worse.  If you didn't do the curing, you have little idea if it was successful.</p></blockquote><p>ACT is a program that's basically created out of the goodness of Aditu's heart - as far as I know it's not pay per use nor is there a charge to use it.</p><p>So ...that it does ANYTHING is pretty awesome, IMO.  That many raid guilds are completely glued to the information presented in the program as proof of whether someone is doing their job or not - healers included - is certainly not the fault of the program.</p>

[Ishnar]

<p><cite>Banditman wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>The difference is that ACT can already do a lot of that, it simply "doesn't" do it.</p><p>It could parse debuffs if it chose . . . it does not.</p><p>It could parse deaths if it chose . . . it does not.</p></blockquote><p>Well, this has been mostly addressed.  I'll also point out that lag also plays a factor.  So if everyone is spamming, it is very difficult for a parser to properly assign who cast what spell based only on an anonymous effect message.</p><p>However, I don't see them changing the log info unfortunately. Basically, the combat logs would have to show ALL raw numbers for a parser to calculate missing damage it's not an impossibility, but it would probably increase lag with all that extra information being spat out.</p><p>In other words, the parser would have to know every members' mitigation/avoidance/effective stats/the amount of all the haste and dps mods.  Right now parsers just know what happened.  In other words.  A parser only knows you took 100 damage.  It does not know that the mob tried to inflict 500 damage, but 400 damage was mitigated.</p>

[Sprin]

<p>I dont care about the damage that "WOULD" have occurred had this or that not been cured etc etc...</p><p>Just want them to include in the logs when someone is cured of a detrimental effect and who cured them...</p><p>debuffs.. meh... not as important, but cures would be nice for sure...</p><p>For fights where raid members are responsible for self cures of fail condition detrimentals, it would be a great tool to see who is and who isnt doing their job.</p><p>Forget the debuffs for now SOE, please just add into the "COMBAT LOG" who cured what cure off of whom.... that will give us loads of info.</p>

[Mikai]

<p>I have wanted, at least, the cures to be parsable.  Debuffs would be nice as well, now that you mention it.  Currently, cures show up as "X was removed from Soandso".  No indication at all of who did it.  Not to indicate anything negative toward Aditu.  I think ACT is a wonderful program I rely on quite a bit.  I just agree making cures and debuffs parsable would be very nice.  How easy it is to make ACT parse that, I don't claim to know, but the possibility is certainly there should SOE make this change.</p>

[Sprin]

<p><cite>Kaidia@Nagafen wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>I have wanted, at least, the cures to be parsable.  Debuffs would be nice as well, now that you mention it.  Currently, cures show up as "X was removed from Soandso".  No indication at all of who did it.  Not to indicate anything negative toward Aditu.  I think ACT is a wonderful program I rely on quite a bit.  I just agree making cures and debuffs parsable would be very nice.  How easy it is to make ACT parse that, I don't claim to know, but the possibility is certainly there should SOE make this change.</p></blockquote><p>ACT is an amazing program... if given the right tools from SOE, im sure it could be parsed very easily... </p><p>I looked at my log last night during the raid.  The amount of green and blue worthless "lore" text was astonishing.  Every time a group buff is cast it says something like:</p><p><cite>Sprinng's Fake Combat log wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>"Groupmember1's group feels a wave of energy rush over them"</p><p>"Groupmember2's group feels a wave of energy rush over them"</p><p>"Groupmember3s group feels a wave of energy rush over them"</p><p>"Groupmember4's group feels a wave of energy rush over them"</p><p>"Groupmember5's group feels a wave of energy rush over them"</p><p>"Groupmember6's group feels a wave of energy rush over them"</p><p><em><span style="color: #888888;">Then when it expires you get something along the lines of:</span></em></p><p>"Groupmember1's group no longer feels the flow of energy"</p><p>"Groupmember2's group no longer feels the flow of energy"</p><p>"Groupmember3s group no longer feels the flow of energy"</p><p>"Groupmember4s group no longer feels the flow of energy"</p><p>"Groupmember5's group no longer feels the flow of energy"</p><p>"Groupmember6's group no longer feels the flow of energy"</p></blockquote><p>For one flippen group heal / ward / buff etc...  It tells you every group members group has felt this and then no longer feels it, for each member... Worthless information... they can easily replace this fluff with the cure and debuff information and probably save room.</p><p>I made the above text up, but it was something very similar to the above.  I will post an actual combat log and take out all the pertinent information and just leave the fluff for a 1 minute fight, and maybe show SOE that the excuse of "that would just be too much information and would cause lag" is a weak excuse at best.</p>

[flowercivicsi]

<p>Aditu... thank you for all your hard work and dedication to ACT as well as your handy how-to's when people would like to learn more about utilizing the full potential of this program which is very in-depth.  Your how-to's have helped me a ton to improve my overall as well as help other people get their feet wet with ACT.</p><p><strong>Cures</strong> should be the #1 priority for adding to the text logs.  Granted I can parse my own cures, but I would like to see how I faired against the other healers in the group/raid.  TSO raids are soo cure intensive that it's vital to know who is, and is not doing their job.</p><p>Removing the fluff would be the start to helping with the parsing of this, but is it really that important to see if Umbral Trap was applied thruout the fight? The more I ponder this the more I see the flaws with this as well as there would be no duration check.  Defilers AA tree EoF allows for us to extend the duration of debuffs so if you think that the time for this debuff was up but not reapplied asap then you may be yelling at someone for no reason.  Not to mention some raid mobs strip the applied debuffs so again another flaw in that logic. </p><p>Lets focus on those cures, and after that victory proceed to bigger and better things.</p>

[Sprin]

<p>Yeah, debuffs arent as important as cures...</p><p>My god the amount of useless fluff is so astonishing its just mind boggling....    just a simple fight with a junker quest mob results in dozens of worthless bits of information in the combat log... </p><p>Please SOE get rid of this stuff to start, if nothing else, even if you dont add cures into it, get rid of this garbage and it might speed some peoples games up... 1000's of lines of worthless information during a raid fight that can be avoided and / or replaced by usefull information...</p><p>I ended up changing my text color for all that crap to black, and the amount of gaps in the information (because it disapears from view on a black chat box) is astonishing... there is more black text then any other.. pathetic IMHO...</p><p>If nothing else, can a Dev explain to us why they include this information?   Is there a use to it?  Seeing 6 "A rush of fear has washed over GROUPMEMBERS Group" for each group member is just plain worthless information.  What is the point?</p>

[thog_zork]

<p>cure 2 log would be a blast ... so would be the removal of uneeded stuff from the logs !</p><p>ps. debuffs 2 log would also be a blast !</p>

[Sprin]

<p><a href="http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/posts/list.m?start=15&topic_id=457612�">http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/...457612�</a></p><p>yahoo... thanks....</p>

[Sprin]

<p>Got cures on the parse now.. yahoo <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" /></p><p>Next step, specific debuffs listed!</p><p>but that wasnt as big of a deal as cures was IMHO</p>