Sort Groups & Tanks - papa-smurf/Gargul GitHub Wiki

There's nothing more annoying than having to manually switch people around between encounters. It can take a long time, it's very easy to make a mistake, demoting/assigning tanks can be a hassle and all it takes is someone to leave and re-enter the raid to mess it up, resulting in even more time lost.

There are a couple of addons out there already that allow you to sort groups based on a pre-defined roster. Most have some downsides in common however, mostly related to user-unfriendly AI's and lack of flexibility, which made us decide to go with a different approach.

How do I use the roster module?

You can use one of the following commands to open the roster window:

/gl roster
/gl groups
/gl gr

After which you're greeted by the following screen:

You can post your group roster in the large edit box. The roster has to be provided in the following format:

1:Player1,Player2,Player3,Player4,Player5
2:Player1,Player2,Player3,Player4,Player5
3:Player1,Player2,Player3,Player4,Player5
4:Player1,Player2,Player3,Player4,Player5
5:Player1,Player2,Player3,Player4,Player5
6:Player1,Player2,Player3,Player4,Player5
7:Player1,Player2,Player3,Player4,Player5
8:Player1,Player2,Player3,Player4,Player5
9:Tank1,Tank2,Tank3,Tank4,Tank5

The number in front of the players (e.g. "2:") refers to the group number (group 2 in this case). Group 9 is hard-reserved for main tanks, which we'll cover in a bit. This format might seem like a hassle at first, but we'll provide some quality of life tools further down!

After you've provided the roster you can click the "Apply" button to start sorting the groups. Keep in mind that there are a couple requirements for this functionality:

1. You need to be in a raid
2. You need to have a lead or assist role
3. Everyone must be out of combat
4. There can't be anyone in the raid who's not in the roster

If one of these conditions isn't met then you'll get a message specifying what went wrong. If all went well then Gargul will start sorting the groups:

Sorting the groups might take a little bit, since there has to be a delay between moving players around or you might end up freezing people's screens (especially those who have full-ui overhauls like ElvUI/TukUI). When the group sorting is done you will again get a message from Gargul:

Setting up tanks

At any point after poster the group roster, even before "Applying" the roster, you can click the "Assign Tanks" button to assign all of your tanks. There are a couple things to keep in mind here:

1. This button will not demote tanks, that's handled by the "Apply" button
2. If you want to assign more than two tanks you have to click the button multiple times (this is due to addon limitations)

After all tanks have been set you will be greeted with:

Managing rosters

Manually typing your rosters in the required format can be quite a hassle, is not particularly intuitive and it's not really user-friendly enough to share with your raid leaders or other guild members who might want to have a say in the roster.

Personally we use a shared google sheet where we add all players who are in the raid and then make groups from there. This sheet automatically outputs all of our rosters to the required format so we can easily copy/paste and "Apply" them during the raid and provides auto-complete functionalities. Feel free to make a copy of the following sheet, or use it as a source of inspiration to make your own:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1atqClMTo8qUeBuXTsquB5FxaKhyCQbcFRVGZjv9PJc8