# nugsCooldownPulse

**An icon pulses on screen the moment your cooldown is ready, then fades away.**

Nothing else. No bars, no timers, no permanent furniture on your screen. Drag it where
you want it and forget it is there until it has something to tell you.

> [IMAGE: a pull on a dummy - one or two icons pulsing near the middle of the screen.
> A 3-5 second GIF is worth more here than anything written below.]

---

## Built for Midnight

Midnight made cooldown *numbers* secret. An addon may display them, but can no longer
read them or do arithmetic on them. Every classic cooldown addon was built on some form
of `duration - (GetTime() - start)`, and in combat that line is now an error. That is
what broke them - not neglect.

What was never made secret is the **fact that a cooldown is running**. This addon
watches that instead, and times cooldowns with its own clock. It never touches a value
it is not allowed to have, so there are no workarounds here and nothing that quietly
stops working next patch.

One useful consequence: **cooldown reduction, resets and haste do not matter.** It does
not predict when your cooldown ends. It notices the moment it did.

---

## Features

- **It finds your cooldowns for you.** The list is built from your class and
active-spec spellbook, and you tick the ones you actually care about. Racial,
profession and general abilities stay out of the way unless you ask for them.
- **Priority list.** When a macro fires two cooldowns at once, or haste lines three of
them up, you decide which one you see first instead of leaving it to chance.
- **One icon, or several.** Show them one at a time, or side by side when they land
together - growing centered, left, right, up or down.
- **Early notice.** The icon can arrive a moment before the cooldown actually lands, so
you press the button on time rather than after reading it. (See the limits below.)
- **Tune every part of it.** Icon size, peak alpha, pop scale, fade-in, hold and
fade-out are all sliders. Optional ability name underneath, with your choice of font,
outline and size.
- **Masque support**, plus every font LibSharedMedia offers when another addon has
loaded it.
- **Optional sound cue** - six built-in sounds, or point it at your own file.
- **Trinkets** with a use effect are tracked alongside your spells.
- **A minimum-cooldown setting** keeps the global cooldown and rotational filler quiet,
so you only hear about the abilities that matter.

> [IMAGE: the options window, showing the ability picker on the right.]

---

## Getting started

1. Install and reload.
2. Type `/ncp` to open the options.
3. Tick the abilities you want in the list on the right. Sensible ones are already
selected based on their cooldown length.
4. Click **Unlock anchor**, drag the icon where you want it, and lock it again.

That is the whole setup. Everything else is optional tuning.

Your ability picks are saved per character, since spellbooks differ. Display settings
are shared across your account.

| Command | Effect |
| --- | --- |
| `/ncp` | open or close the options window |
| `/ncp unlock` / `/ncp lock` | move the anchor |
| `/ncp test` | show a test pulse |
| `/ncp priority` | order the icons when several land together |
| `/ncp min <1-600>` | ignore cooldowns shorter than this |
| `/ncp lead <0-2>` | how early to announce, in seconds |
| `/ncp find <name>` | why an ability is or is not being tracked |
| `/ncp diag` | what the client currently lets the addon see |
| `/ncp resetall` | back to defaults |

---

## Compatibility

- **Retail only**, built and tested against 12.0.7. It uses APIs that do not exist in
Classic.
- **Masque** is supported if you have it - the icon registers under the group
"nugsCooldownPulse".
- **LibSharedMedia** fonts appear automatically if any addon has loaded it. Neither is
required; nothing is bundled.

---

## Known limits, stated plainly

**The early notice cannot be exact in combat.** Out of combat it is. In combat, the
remaining time on a cooldown genuinely cannot be known by an addon - Blizzard closed
every route, and I went looking through the whole 12.0 API surface. In combat it is
predicted from a cooldown length this addon timed earlier, so on abilities with heavy
cooldown reduction the prediction lands late and no early icon appears. It never fires
early *wrongly*; it falls back to pulsing on time.

**Charge abilities** pulse when the ability becomes castable again, not once per
charge. How many charges you are holding is a secret value.

**Trinkets need a use effect.** A proc trinket's internal cooldown is invisible to
addons in combat.

Tested most thoroughly on Retribution Paladin. If something misbehaves on your spec,
`/ncp diag` and `/ncp find <ability>` report exactly what the addon can and cannot see.
A bug report carrying that output is something I can actually fix, rather than guess
at - and it is genuinely welcome.