WowAce

Two related ideas here.

1) Detect when I die as an announceable event
2) add substition variable <killer> for the name of my killer
* include variations for <killerrace> and <killerclass>
* include <killer|me> for when I kill myself (falling damage, etc)

A more detailed report could say:
"I was killed by Defias Gunman when I took 5312 damage (32 overkill) from [Smash Charge]"
"I was killed by <killer|myself> when I took <killdamage> damage (<killoverkill> overkill) from <killspelllink>"
"Ouch, <killer|I> killed me with <killspell> which hit me for <killdamage> damage (<killoverkill> overkill)"

It may be possible to approach this in two steps - kill detection, and then killer info - but I need to investigate whether the killed/death detection implies already knowing the killer name and the rest of the kill event info like what spell and how much damage, or whether there's a separate event for just being killed, and it may take more combat log parsing to find out who the killer was and what spell and how much damage you took, etc.

Part of this feature idea is intended to support the meta feature request ticket #35 to be able to automatically report:

[3. LocalDefense] Stonarius says: I was killed by Moocow, a Tauren Shaman at (45,62) Nagrand Elemental Plateau

Need to detect death and killer information to make this possible

The Obituary addon does this. Having seen it in action, I see there is a monkey wrench to this. Obituary shows the last 3 things that you, instead of just the killing blow, which is good because typically the second or third to last thing is what really killed you, when you take 15k from something, and then a DoT tick for 1 damage finishes you off...

A couple of thoughts on this...

We could triple the available variables, adding <killer1> <killer2> <killer3> as the casters of the last 3 spells to hit you, with <killspell1> <killspelllink1> <killdamage1> to 3. <killoverkill> only applies to the final killing blow.

We could select 1 as the largest value among the last 3 hits. <killdamage> would be the max value from the last 3 hits you took. <killer> would have cast <killspell> linked as <killspelllink> to deal that blow to you.

Combining the ideas, we could support everything like this...

What killed me was when <killermax> cast <killspellmax> or <killspelllinkmax> to deal <killdamagemax> damage to me.<newline>Looking at the big picture, it was a combination of <killer3> casting <killspelllink3> for <killdamage3>, then <killer2> hit me with <killspelllink2> for <killdamage2>, and then the killing blow was from <killer1>'s <killspelllink1> doing <killdamage1> to finish me off, plus <killoverkill> overkill.

For wittier, more useful SpeakinSpell-style humor-oriented messaging announcements, killermax or killer1 are probably the more important sets of stats to use.

The more I think about the whole issue, the idea of determining what really killed you is very complex and takes a certain human understanding. If you get hit with an arcane blast for 50k, is it the arcane blast that killed you? or is it the debuff you had stacked 20 times that increased arcane damage by 8000%?

For the purposes of pvp, I think we only care about the killing blow. For pve, we care more about the killermax.

For SpeakinSpell's scope, I think it makes sense to stop at killer1 and killermax, but given that the additional data would have to be collected to determine the max, it makes sense to support the complete combined list just for the heck of it. It wouldn't take extra work.

The final caveat of identifying what really killed you - some kind of <killersmart> is a task for a separate addon whose purpose would be identifying those combos, such as obituary or something... possibilities exist for allowing other addons to integrate with SpeakinSpell. (see ticket 56)

3.2.2.16 (?or near there) adds the ability to detect "Combat Event: I receive pvp yellow damage (killing blow)" and white damage (killing blow) which may be used for this purpose, however it's not exactly correct. What that means is that you took damage, and it included >0 overkill, which I assume means you died. There is a separate event API notification to indicate that you died, and that should be hooked to do this more accurately, and as a single event instead of separated for white and yellow damage.

3.3.2.01 adds "Combat Event: I died"

Detecting <killer> is somewhat trickier

I'm re-assigning all my tickets to Duerma

Unassigning tickets that are not actively being worked on