Original author: ptweety

Note: I am no longer playing LOTRO or doing plugins. Any other competent plugin author is invited to take over maintenance of this and/or any of my other plugins. --Thurallor 6/13/2023

Introduction

BuffMonitor is similar to BuffBars; it shows a progress bar for each buff on your character that you are interested in. It is simpler and less configurable than BuffBars, but it has one advantage: When a buff expires, it doesn't disappear from BuffMonitor. So it helps you remember which buffs you need to use in the future.

Version 2.00 incorporates all available patches, which add the following features:

• You can now attach a quickslot to each progress bar, so you can easily remember which skills/items correspond to each buff.
• Using patcherman's Combat Analysis with BuffMonitor Support patch, the plugin can now monitor the debuffs on your enemies.

Installation and Startup

To install:

• First, unzip the archive. You will get a folder called "PTweety". Move this folder into your Documents/The Lord of the Rings Online/Plugins folder. (If you have not previously installed any plugins, you will have to first create the Plugins folder.)
• Or if you prefer, you may use Plugin Compendium to do the installation.

To load the plugin, use the game's built-in Plugin Manager. This can be found in the "^" menu, at the bottom of the screen. Click the icon, then choose "System" and then "Plugin Manager".

When the Plugin Manager opens, find BuffMonitor in the list on the left side, then click "Load" to load the plugin. If you would like the plugin to load automatically each time you login, choose your character's name in the "Automatically Load For" pulldown menu.

If you would like to track debuffs on your target, you will need to install Combat Analysis and the Combat Analysis with BuffMonitor Support patch. Then use this guide to configure the debuffs in Combat Analysis.

Configuration and Usage

To create a window, open the Plugin Manager, select BuffMonitor on the left, and click the "Options" tab at the top. Click "New" to create a new window; after configuring its options, click "Accept" at the bottom.

To add effects to the window, right-click the window to first add a bar, then add an effect to it.

When entering effect names, remember:

• The effect names are case-sensitive.
• You can use a partial effect name, such as "Battle Lore" instead of "Minas Ithil Battle Lore", so you won't have to change it when the next kind of "Battle Lore" is added to the game.
• If the effect name contains a hyphen, you need to replace it with "%-". For example, "Honey-cake" becomes "Honey%-cake", and "Light-oil" becomes "Light%-oil".
• In general you can use any valid Lua pattern-matching string, but the above are the only important things to know for the average user.

For each BuffMonitor window, you configure whether it shows only in combat, only out of combat, or always. This is useful to separate pre-combat buffs (e.g. food) from the buffs that you need to monitor while in combat.

There is also a "Lock quickslots" option, so that after you are finished configuring the quickslots the way you want them, you won't accidentally modify them.

This plugin responds to the normal "Reposition UI" hotkey (by default, Ctrl+\ on U.S. keyboards; Ctrl+# for UK; Strg+# for German). While repositioning, you may:

• Resize the windows, move them, or change their orientation.
• Hold down Shift to snap windows to each other.
• Hold down Alt to snap windows to a grid.

The chat command /bm options opens the Plugin Manager and shows the options panel.

Known Issues

• Loading this plugin with different client languages (English, German, French) is likely to corrupt the settings file. So don't do that.
• The quickslots can get "stale". For example, if you drag a stack of Battle Lore scrolls into a quickslot, it may stop working once that stack is used up, even if you still have more Battle Lore scrolls in your inventory. Unfortunately, I don't know how to fix this, and the only workaround is to drag the new stack into the quickslot.

Revision History

(6-Nov-2022) Version 2.03:

• Incorporated the BuffMonitor with Quickslots patch. This patch is now obsolete; you do not need to install it.
  • Revision history is here.
• Incorporated the BuffMonitor with Quickslots and Debuff Support patch. This patch is now obsolete; you do not need to install it.
  • Enabled display of debuffs configured in (a patched version of) CombatAnalysis.
  • Adds an option to set the background colors of bars when they have no buffs displayed. This allows you to create bars that become invisible when they have no buffs.
  • Fixes a graphical issue whereby the elapsed remaining bar remained after a buff had expired when the effect was displayed in multiple bars.
• Cleaned up the options panel a bit.

Version 1.0.0 (this and all previous versions by ptweety):

• Now uses the options panel of the Turbine plugin manager
• Removed handles
• Added options to control the visibility of windows [if in/out of combat, mounted]
• Added options to control the visibility of icon, name, timer and colors of the effect bars
• Fixed the auto load bug

Version 0.3.x:

• Fixed handling of the same effect in multiple bars
• Fixed to load/save visibility state of windows
• Changed the event handling a bit
• Changed the display format of buffs remaining time
• Window resizing (+ snap to a 4x2 grid)
• Minor bug fixes

Version 0.2.x:

• Window positioning (+ snap to a 16x16 grid)
• Minor bug fixes

Version 0.1.0:

• Initial version

Credits

• Original plugin written by ptweety
• Quickslots feature added by Thurallor
• Combat Analysis debuff integration added by patcherman
• Settings, Options and CallBack handling by Pengoros
• DragBar by Deusdictum
• Window arrangement inspired by MrJackdaw