Having trouble with DPS rotation - step 5

[bollwerk]

For some reason I cannot fathom, step 5 in my DPS rotation is not firing off.
Step 5 is my "fallback" DPS key, that has no cooldown, no casting time and no resource requirements.
In theory, it should fire off when the other 4 abilities are on cooldown.
The other 4 abilities DO seem to fire off, although there are some times when I see an ability not on cooldown and nothing fires off. No idea why.

I see this in the debug console when I spam my DPS rotation hotkey:



Here is the relevant key map:
http://pastebin.com/ysMjnep8

Any idea what I'm doing wrong?

[bob]

bollwerk.png (31.73 KiB) Viewed 18520 times

The Red box, you are setting the State of the whole Mapped Key that you are executing (DPS Rotation). Any State that this mapped key has, is lost when you set it to off (effectively unload it). When you set the State to On 3.5 seconds later, it loads up afresh. In other words, the DPS Rotation mapped key resets back to Step 1, because it doesn't remember that it was at Step 4. It never gets to step 5 because it was turned off when you were calling it!.
If this is a casting time that cannot be interrupted, then it should be pointing at the Virtual Combat -> DPS Rotation mapped key.

The Green Box, which is the cooldown time I have highlighted because you are using the same TImer for the Red Box. If the Red Box is the casting time that cannot be interrupted, then you should avoid this, and use a different Timer for Casting Time vs Cooldown Time.

You can use the same casting time timer across your rotations, provided it wont be invoked at the same time as another usage of the same timer (unless of course this is what you want - and most of the time you don't).
As the WIKI recommends, the number of timers, for most peoples usage, should be set to 1. This prevents you from queuing up two actions on different countdown clocks on a single timer. Otherwise it can be a bit confusing if you setup two actions using the same timer, one at 5 seconds and one at 60 seconds, but then the both run on the first tick at 5 seconds!. Because the number of timers setting is global, this has been taken further and it is generally recommended to avoid using one timer for the countdown of two different actions.

This all means, that you should have a DPS Rotation Casting Time timer, which is used for the sole purpose of the state of the Virtual Combat -> DPS Rotation mapped key. You would have a second AOE DPS Rotation Casting Time timer, which is used for the sole purpose of the state of the Virtual Combat -> AOE DPS Rotation mapped key. All skills get their own individual Cooldown timers.

Because the Casting Time timers are usually common between multiple skills, then I (using firescue17's example) have a bunch of these setup in a template mapped key, and these are called via a Do Mapped Key action. After some experimentation, in my setup, at the very least, every skill always disables the Virtual Combat for 1 second. This is a global hit that I have to take to account for the round trip to the server, and for the game animation. If I remove that, then the game skill queue bugs out and it can end up skipping skills, which can be a little annoying when you have a chain.

[bollwerk]

OK, I think I understand.
I was thinking that each item in Action Timer Group was it's own group of timers (i.e. Different, independent Timers)
In other words, I thought that my "Blade Dance" timer was a group of timers related to Blade Storm and each sub-item had it's own independant timer, but the group as a whole could be reset at the beginning of my action list.

[bollwerk]

If this is a casting time that cannot be interrupted, then it should be pointing at the Virtual Combat -> DPS Rotation mapped key.

Do I then need a separate Virtual Combat Key Map for each character?
Or perhaps a separate DPS Rotation mapped key for each character in Virtual Combat?

Otherwise, it seems like this would disable the Key Map for all characters that use it, not just the one I want.

[bob]

Do I then need a separate Virtual Combat Key Map for each character?
Or perhaps a separate DPS Rotation mapped key for each character in Virtual Combat?

Otherwise, it seems like this would disable the Key Map for all characters that use it, not just the one I want.

No. Each character has it's own copy of the key maps and the mapped keys (and pretty much all the ISBoxer artifacts too), so when you say Disable Virtual Combat -> DPS Rotation on self (or Window:Current if you prefer), then it only disables for the toon that is running the mapped key. If you happen to have multiple toons with this particular virtualisation chain, then they will disable their own copies of the Virtual Combat -> DPS Rotation mapped key.

[bollwerk]

I'm afraid I am still confused.
I have 2 toons. For the duo, I have a Combat Hotkeys key map (with hotkeys set) and a Virtual Combat key map. For each individual toon, I have key maps with their own abilities and also mapped keys for the DPS Rotation and AoE DPS Rotation. So when I press hotkey #1, it virtualizes the DPS Rotation mapped key down to the individual key maps that I created for each toon. But as you said earlier, I should not disable the toon's key map for casting time timers, but rather disable the Virtual Combat key map (which is tied to my duo). It's still not clear to me if this disables casting for both toons or not.

[bob]

TL;DR
It depends on what you set the Target to. If you set the Target to Window:Current (or self), then it will only disable/enable it for the one toon that is executing the Mapped Key State Action. If you set the Target to Window: All w/ Current (or all) then it will affect both toons.

You should set the Target to Window:Current, so it will only affect the toon that it is executing for.



The longer explanation.....

Analogies are sometimes a bit dodfy, but lets say you have a set of instructions on paper, and you give them to your toons. Do you give them one piece of paper to share those instructions, or do you give them a separate piece of paper? Even if they are the same instruction it works much better if each toon has their OWN COPY. When those instructions need to affect all toons, you just tell the others what is going on (walkie talkies - or InnerSpace) and everyone does that instruction as written on their piece of paper (any maybe makes notes, sets a stopwatch, etc). When the instruction only affects the one toon, then only that toon does the instruction on their own piece of paper (maybe making notes, setting a stopwatch, etc). Who executes an instruction is determined by the Target.

Now your toons might have their own specific implementation details (Virtualisation), and need to keep track of their own current instruction (State). Doesn't matter. What each toon has in their instructions depends on the assignment of the Key Maps. If you assign to a Character Set, then all the toons in that Character set will have a copy of those instructions. If you assign a Key Map to specific Characters, then those Characters get a copy of those instructions. Virtualisation just means that if a character is told, Run this mapped key called VirtualCombat-DPSRotation, then run this other one instead called CLASSSPECIFIC-DPSRotation. Each character can be told to run different other ones, but they ALL need to know about the first one that they are being told to run.

Just because you are editing only one Key Map/Mapped Key, it does not mean that there is only one copy of it when you are actually running. It's one of those things, that once you wrap you head around it, you go "of course!". It's a bit like, you only have 1 game installation, but you are running many copies of it..... (that is a bit of a crappy analogy).

[bollwerk]

OK, that makes sense.
So even though my "Virtual Combat" Keymap is assigned to the Character set "SWTOR-Duo", there is actually a copy of it running on EACH toon in the Character Set.

[bob]

Yep.

A Character Set is just a group of Characters. Assignment to a Character Set just implies that every Character in that Set gets it. Saves you lots of assigning to individuals. It also means that the same Character can be in different Character Sets and have different assignments, because they are in a different Character Set, and the loading, and the decision of what to load, occurs when you run the Character Set.