ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

There are a handful of passive talents and prodigies that have triggered effects with a cooldown, as generally noted by the somewhat cryptic line "Note: this has a cooldown" in the talent description. Problem is, the effect's cooldown isn't actually displayed anywhere convenient (okay, technically you can drag the passive talent off the talents dialog into the hotkeys toolbar, but that has drawbacks).

Hence my new Passive Cooldowns addon, which displays the talents' effect cooldowns in the buffs area of the Minimalist UI. Specifically, it shows cooldowns from:

• Born into Magic
• Cauterize
• Meteoric Crash
• Unbreakable Will
• Spell Feedback
• Draconic Body
• Bloodspring
• Elemental Surge

(If I've missed any, let me know.)

If you're an addon developer and you have a talent or prodigy that would benefit from this addon, it's easy to hook into it — all you need to do is put the field 'passive_cooldown = true' in your talent definition.

[Now, the implementation is kind of hacky, alas, as there's no convenient hook to add anything to the buffs area, so I won't swear I've got this exactly right. I'm lucky I already wanted the cooldown trackers to be on the detrimental-effects side, or I'd have had to overload the entire method…]

[Technical info:]

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"Blessed are the yeeks, for they shall inherit Arda..."

Frequently Asked Questions:

Why not just drag the talent into the hotkeys toolbar?

Well, you could drag the talent off the Talents dialog onto the toolbar, but that has drawbacks:

• It takes up valuable toolbar real estate and an otherwise usable hotkey.
• It's less noticeable when the talent's effect goes into cooldown.
• It's not done automatically, so you have to remember to do it each time you learn the talent with a character.
• A lot of players don't even know you can do that.

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"Blessed are the yeeks, for they shall inherit Arda..."

I suppose you could put Vitality up there.

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A little bit of a starters guide written by yours truly here.

[sound F/X: source diving] Ah, sneaky trigger hiding in a talent method not named trigger(). In fact, now that I know what to look for, there are a lot of other talents I should have been covering. Here's what's added in v1a, just pushed out:

• Vitality
• Shieldsmaiden Aura
• Hold the Ground
• Pestilent Blight
• Guardian Unity
• Fold Fate
• Fold Warp
• Fold Gravity

We also cover some talents from Embers of Rage:

• Uncertainty Principle
• Improved Gestalt
• Subcutaneous Metallisation
• Pain Enhancement System

and Ashes of Urh'Rok:

• Voracious Blade
• Incinerating Blows
• Grim Future
• Burning Sacrifice

Also also, some tweaks to the debuff icon for the trigger cooldown: we add the "clock-sweep" fractional countdown indicator to make it look more like a hotkey toolbar icon, and we add an explanatory note to the tooltip that this is in fact a passive cooldown trigger.

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"Blessed are the yeeks, for they shall inherit Arda..."

So I just discovered that Embers' Embedded Restoration Systems talent might actually be suitable for tracking by this addon: it's sustained rather than passive, but it does have a trigger with a cooldown while it's active (in fact, before the difference occurred to me, I was surprised not to see a cooldown tracker for it). I'm working on the necessary code changes to cover this talent; before I push that out as a new release, though, are there any other talents with similar behavior that I should be handling similarly?

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"Blessed are the yeeks, for they shall inherit Arda..."

Well, no answer, so I'll go ahead and push out v1b with support for Embers' Embedded Restoration Systems. Note that this involves some internal rearragements to add support for showing trigger cooldowns for sustained talents; if you're an addon developer and you'd like this addon to show a trigger cooldown marker for your sustained (or passive) talents, I've added some instructions on how to set that up.

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"Blessed are the yeeks, for they shall inherit Arda..."

v1c is mostly a compatibility release with ZOmnibus v15; it also adds a new game option "Passive cooldown trackers", to turn the trackers on or off [this is mostly for ZOmnibus users who want all the other parts of ZOmnibus but don't like this bit ]. If you have any characters using this addon together with ZOmnibus, you should upgrade both together, and future characters should only use one or the other (if you forget, the character creation dialog will warn you).

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"Blessed are the yeeks, for they shall inherit Arda..."

So it's been brought to my attention that Forbidden Cults adds some new talents that could benefit from a passive trigger cooldown tracker. So far I've found Fuel Pain, Inner Tentacles and Unravel Existence; any more I've missed before I push out a release to cover these?

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"Blessed are the yeeks, for they shall inherit Arda..."

Okay, no other takers, so that's going out as v1d.

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"Blessed are the yeeks, for they shall inherit Arda..."

Would Severed Threads from Chronophage be another one?

[I knew I should have waited longer for a response, but with that big honking bug in Store Wish List, I was kind of in a rush to push out a ZOmnibus release… We Apologize for the Inconvenience.™]


[sound F/X: source diving] …Well, the description certainly sounds like it has a trigger cooldown, and the talent does define a cooldown of 15 turns, but I can't find in the code where that cooldown is actually started. In your experience, does the talent behave as the description describes, as though it has a trigger cooldown? [Ideally, if you have an active character using this talent that has a free hotkey toolbar slot, you could temporarily drag the talent off the Talents dialog onto the toolbar, and it should show whether the talent is actually going into cooldown.]

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"Blessed are the yeeks, for they shall inherit Arda..."

Unfortunately, I don't have anyone with Chronophage handy--it's a category I leave for late in my build and most of my characters don't make it that far.

Edit: Tried making a cultist in debug mode. You're right, there is no 15 turn cooldown. The ability doesn't have a cooldown indicator when placed on the toolbar, and can trigger multiple times in quick succession. I can only assume that it's a bug.

Well, at least I didn't miss something obvious. *whew* Thanks for testing this. For now, then, we'll put Severed Threads on the TODO list and update the addon when that bug is fixed.

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"Blessed are the yeeks, for they shall inherit Arda..."

So I learned recently over in the Bugs forum that there are artifacts that have their own passive trigger effects that run on the object's internal stored power. Since these artifacts aren't using talents under the hood, Passive Cooldowns wasn't equipped to show cooldown trackers for them (well, not so much "cooldown" as "recharge", I guess, but six of one…).

Well, with a little work (I'd forgotten how ugly that part of the UI code is), v2 adds support for… well, at least the ones I know about. Currently this covers:

• In the main campaign, Prox's Lucky Halfling Foot and Butcher.
• In Embers, Life Support Suit, Spider's Fangs, The Lumberator, and The Twisted Blade.

Other items from other addons might also be included, if they use the same passive-trigger mechanism as these artifacts (basically, we key on the presence of 'power' and 'min_power_to_trigger' fields); this is untested, however. If there are other artifacts in the game with different passive trigger mechanisms that aren't covered by the above, let me know here and I'll try to add support for them.

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"Blessed are the yeeks, for they shall inherit Arda..."

Thank you!