ConvergeFu - User Guide ConvergeFu is a small addon developed predominantly for use by the officers of Converge in order to assist them with the everyday tasks of guild management. It is designed to be a plugin for the popular FuBar plugin which means all potential users of ConvergeFu should install the FuBar addon in addition to ConvergeFu. Note though that if you have no other use for FuBar in your current User Interface (UI) then you can simply leave the FuBar menubar installed but hidden from view and have ConvergeFu appear as a button attached to your minimap instead. If you are a non-officer member of the guild and have no need to use ConvergeFu beyond having it installed then you can leave ConvergeFu 'attached' to the FuBar menubar and leave the menubar hidden thus ensuring ConvergeFu and FuBar make no visual impact on your UI.
In normal usage, ConvergeFu will appear as an icon on your FuBar menubar (or minimap) and offer a number of simple options. Hovering the mouse over the icon will display a tooltip containing information about the addon, the guild you are in and the rank you currently hold as well as a list of the officer members of Converge along with their current online status - are they online, on their main or an alt and so on.
Left clicking on the icon will perform one of several actions depending upon whether you are holding a modifier key down at the same time or not. The group of "left click" actions are intended to be shortcuts to commonly required functions of ConvergeFu. At the current time, the left click shortcut actions are defined as follows:
Left click (+ no modifier) = Toggle the RBS dashboard On/Off.
Left click (+ Alt) = Toggle Buff Monitor Mode.
Left click (+ Ctrl) = Toggle BusyResponder On/Off.
Left click (+ Ctrl & Alt) = Attempt to join raid/raid-queue.
Don't worry if you don't know what these options do at the moment, more on them later.
If you right click on the icon, the main ConvergeFu menu will appear. The top section of this menu contains the various ConvergeFu menu options whilst the bottom section of this menu contains the default options provided with all FuBar plugins by default that allow you to customise how and where the ConvergeFu icon appears within your FuBar menubar (or minimap). We'll assume you can understand these options for yourself and thus describe only the specific ConvergeFu menu options here in this guide.
From the top-level, you will see that the menus are organised in the following manner:
1 - Announcements
2 - Custom Chat
3 - Other Addons
4 - Macros
5 - Tools
If you investigate any of these menus, you'll see that typically they lead to further menus that help to organise the content or options available in that area. We'll describe each of these top-level menu sections in order.
1 - Announcements The primary reason to provide a selection of pre-baked announcements is two-fold. First of all, it makes the task of making an announcement very simple - clicking a single option is generally much easier than typing a whole sentence or two. Second of all, it helps to standardise the language used in the announcements and this enables the guild to maintain a high standard of communication with its members. As a European guild, English is a second (or third or fourth!) language for many of our members and therefore it is important that the guild attempts to ensure its announcements are clear and precise so that all its members can understand them easily.
The Announcements section of ConvergeFu is primarily concerned with assisting the officers to make announcements to either the guild as a whole or to a raid group or party. The announcements available are organised into submenus according primarily to the intended channel of communication that is to be used (ie: Guild channel or Raid channel or Party channel) and you simply need to select the appropriate announcement in order for it to be made.
The first set of announcements are Guild Announcements. You'll see a number of standard messages that are used when welcoming new members, awarding promotions, or occasionally failing trial members.
There are two main submenus concerned with sending out the "Raid invitations have begun" messages you will all be familiar with seeing within the guild or the "Raid invites are closed but the wait-list is now open" follow-on message. These two submenus contain a shortlist of the current guild officers by name along with the odd additional member from time to time when we have non-officers that habitually organise and lead raids on the guild's behalf.
The messages are of the form "Please whisper Broliant for a place in the raid" where "Broliant" would typically be replaced by whatever name you selected. Note though, there is a small amount of intelligence in this such that, should Broliant be logged-in on his alt Balgardner, then selecting Broliant would result in a message of the form "Please whisper Balgardner (aka: Broliant) for a place in the raid".
Custom targets can be assigned for both the raid invitation and the raid queue announcements allowing for the option of any member to use ConvergeFu to organise a raid. However, note that normally when an announcement is sent out the guild message of the day field is also updated to reflect the announcement. The guild message of the day is used by ConvergeFu for reference when late-arriving members attempt to use ConvergeFu to automatically join the raid/raid-queue (by CTRL+ALT clicking the ConvergeFu icon) and therefore, for official raids, it is recommended that only officers send out the announcement to ensure that the guild message of the day field is properly updated.
The raid and party announcement submenus contain messages typically needed in raids and partys (surprise!) such as reminding players on the correct guild kill-order, the looting priorities and some reference information such as Ventrilo server details. Guild officers typically use these functions most when they are aware that there are new members of the guild in raids/parties as a means of helping them more quickly understand guild practices.
The "Say Announcements" submenu is typically just a selection of fun things that will appear in the 'Say' channel if selected. Generally, these are humorous guild in-jokes from times past and can be tied to in-game actions if preferred using the command-line syntax of ConvergeFu. For example, if you wanted to have the "Evasion LoL!" announcement made whenever you used evasion, you could simply create a macro along the lines of...
/confu announce say evasion
/cast Evasion
Of course, this is a bit of overkill given you can simply replace the first line with "/say Evasion LoL!" However, there is also the 'random' option that you could add into your macro instead which picks one of the say-expressions at random and says it. Replace the first line of the macro above with something along the lines of...
/confu announce say random
Mostly though, this selection of announcements is simply a fun aide-memoire to help us quote past funnies accurately. In the words of one such famous quote: "aLL I EVER WANTED WAS FOR..."
Finally, the GMOTD or Guild Message of the Day announcements are simply a quick-hand way for officers to set the in-game Guild Message of the Day field to something either useful or fun depending upon the prevailing wind. As noted above, the announcements for the opening of the raid invitation time and the raid queue (aka: wait-list) make use of the GMOTD and therefore these announcements should not be selected until any official raid has completed.
Currently, there are selections for advising members on the time of the next official raid and for providing amusing 'tips' derived from the past experiences and in-jokes related to our members. If you have a tip for us to add, please let us know!
2 - Custom Chat Converge uses a selection of class or role based custom chat channels in raids in addition to the standard RAID/PARTY and GUILD channels to help our members communicate with each other.
The default list of commonly used custom chat channels is as follows:
condknight, condruid, conhunter,
conmage, conpally, conpriest,
conrogue, conshaman, conlock,
conwarrior, conhealer, contank.
The Custom Chat menu options simply help members locate and join/leave each channel as they wish to, depending upon their class and role.
3 - Other Addons Converge requires all members to install a small selection of in-game addons to aid in matters related to raiding. By default, the common 'three' that have always been required are "Deadly Bossmods", "CTRA/oRA2" and "Omen". In addition to this members with specific roles sometimes need additional class/role specific addons such as PallyPower for Paladin buff assignments and so on. ConvergeFu is joining the list of required addons so that additional funtions it provides can supplement those in oRA2 for the guild's raid leaders and assistants.
The submenus of the Other Addons menu are arranged by addon and each submenu offers some options specific to the addon indicated. For example, the DBM (Deadly Bossmods) menu contains a number of options related to creating timers - a handy and valuable feature used commonly within the guild's raids to give a visual timer for things like bio-breaks, pauses until the raid begins, pull-timers and so forth. The oRA2 menu offers options for performing various checks - ready, durability, resistance and so on.
In each case, the options provided via the ConvergeFu menus can nearly always be done directly with the specific addon. ConvergeFu simply provides an easily accessible shortcut to those functions for those members that either don't know the individual addons well enough or for those that simply prefer using ConvergeFu as the hub to access those functions.
4 - Macros There are often times in raid encounters where it is either highly desireable or even necessary to use standard macros to perform some function efficiently and enable the encounter to be successfully completed. Typical examples of this include using spines against High Warlord Naj'entus in Black Temple, operating the drakes in phase 3 of Malygos and so on.
Macros are generally arranged by Raid Instance within the Macros submenus and each macro typically has three options attached to it, "Show", "Run" and "Link". These basically have the following meaning:
Show - Display the macro in the raid chat channel, so that members can create a macro of their own from it.
Run - Run the macro directly when you select this option.
Link - Display the ConFu command to run this macro. (For placing in macros.)
Note though, it is generally necessary to copy the macro via the "Show" option to a macro of your own since many macros have "target {some-mob}" type components and although these run fine from your own macros, they are blocked in addons by Blizzard's addon-lockdown policy... it's a mechanism they use to stop us writing addons that select your target and cast a spell for you. Blizzard think you should really be required to 'play' your character yourself!
The selection of macros available under the Macros menu is generally fairly limited, incorporating only those macros that are generally considered 'essential' to have and thus might need to be communicated to a new member attending an encounter for the first time with us to quickly bring them up to speed without needing to refer them to our guild forums to find the appropriate macro code.
5 - Tools The tools menu is where all the funky parts of ConvergeFu are located. Or by another perspective, it's the big dumping ground that contains a whole host of tools that probably should have been made as addons in their own right. However, just as the announcements section gave all officers/members the chance to make "standardised" announcements, the tools section gives all officers/members the chance to be sure they have access to certain functions without confusing them with a big list of addons they need to install. Often times, just getting everyone up-to-date with a single addon is hard work enough.
Tool 1 - Bid Manager The Bid Manager (aka: BidManager) tool is a relatively new tool that is designed to help general members of a raid to submit their bids for loot that drops and for the Master Looter receiving those bids to understand and rank them appropriately.
It's simple menu provides three initial options for members to use when they wish to place a 'main', 'resist' or 'offspec' bid to the master-looter. Selecting any of these options whilst in a raid group where master looting is enabled will whisper a message to the master looter in the format...
BIDTYPE - Rank-Level
For example, a Hero Member making a 'main' bid will send "MAIN - Hero-Member" whilst a Trial Member making an offspec bid will send "OFFSPEC - Trial-Member".
The next three options on the menu are similar to the first three but are for use by players who are attending a raid on an alt-character at the request of the raid leader and are therefore entitled to a boost in priority according to normal guild practice. When bidding with these options the bid received by the Master Looter will now be of the form...
BIDTYPE - Requested-Rank-Level
For example, a requested Alt-Hero member making a 'main' bid will send "MAIN - Requested-Alt-Hero".
The final options on the BidManager menu are for the use of the Master Looter. The first is used before each piece of loot is announced for bidding to clear all previous bid-data and initialise all internal settings. The second simply sends some help-text to the raid chat channel to advise members on how to submit their bids. The third and fourth are to list the winners of the bidding session once all bids have been received and the final option is to select which channel the results should be listed to (RAID, OFFICER, CHAT etc) when selecting the standard list winners option.