Shadow Helper

# Shadow Helper

**A Guitar Hero–style rotation helper for Shadow Priests, built for TBC Classic.**

Shadow Helper turns your rotation into something you can read at a glance instead of tracking in your head. A single highway bar shows SWP, Vampiric Touch, Mind Blast, and Shadow Word: Death sliding toward the hit zone in the actual order you should cast them — accounting for cast time, not just raw time remaining — while a "Next Cast" readout tells you the single best thing to press right now, all the way down to Trinkets, potions, Dark Rune, Inner Focus, and Fade.

This isn't a static priority list. The recommendation engine actively looks ahead: if casting your top-ranked option would cost you a dot's window (say, Mind Blast coming off cooldown while Vampiric Touch has 2 seconds left), it catches that and saves the dot instead — even mid–Mind Flay channel, clipped cleanly right after a tick lands, not mid-tick.

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## Features

**Rotation Highway**
- One shared bar, four sub-lanes (SWP / VT / Mind Blast / SWD), positioned by real need-time
- "Next Cast" icon calls out the single best action — spells, cooldowns, potions, and all
- Bar colors reflect live cast order (1st up / 2nd / 3rd / 4th), fully customizable
- Fully reorderable, toggleable 11-item priority list — set it up your way from the Rotation tab

**Smart Priority Engine**
- Look-ahead collision protection: won't let a filler cast cost you SWP or VT's window
- Mind Flay clip-awareness: tracks the live channel, only clips at a clean tick boundary unless a dot's about to fall off
- Latency-aware timing, read live from your actual connection — no guessed buffers
- VT always outranks SWP in an emergency (its mana return benefits the whole party)

**Threat Management**
- Fade recommended automatically once your live threat crosses a configurable percentage
- Reads real threat data from the game, gated to group/raid content only

**Cooldown Tracking**
- Vampiric Embrace, Shadowfiend, Inner Focus, Fade, on-use Trinket (auto-detected), Destruction Potion, Mana Potion, and Dark Rune, all in one compact row
- Trinket/Destro Potion timed to lust windows automatically, or switch to "anytime it's up"
- Dark Rune / Mana Pot / Shadowfiend / Fade each get their own editable trigger threshold

**Buff Watch**
- Shows Shadow Protection, Fortitude, Inner Fire, and Divine Spirit — only when actually missing
- Works in any spec, not just Shadow, so a healing Disc/Holy priest gets it too

**Fully Customizable**
- Three independently movable, lockable frames (Rotation, Cooldowns, Buff Watch)
- Scale, icon size, and bar width controls
- Custom colors for readiness states and bar queue order
- Load-in-combat-only mode to keep your screen clean while questing

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## Notes

- The rotation and cooldown tracker require the Shadowform talent (Shadow spec) — Buff Watch works in any spec.
- Slash commands: `/sh` or `/shadowhelper` — `lock`, `unlock`, `reset`, `status`, `options` (or `config`).