Hekili for 8.0, first alpha build released!

First, as usual, thank you to my Patrons for your support and encouragement.  Preparing for Battle for Azeroth has taken a lot of time, and involved taking on some long-standing issues with the addon, and I'm happy to have taken steps toward making it much easier to set-up going forward.

First Things First

The new build supports Enhancement, Retribution, Beast Mastery, and Elemental.  However, keep in mind that the addon is designed to present recommendations based on the action lists (now grouped into action packs), and if the action lists are for 7.3.5, there will be some discrepancies.  Generally, the addon's recommendations are built around SimulationCraft's profiles, but some specializations don't have SimulationCraft profiles for 8.0 (i.e., Beast Mastery is using a 7.3.5 profile with Dire Frenzy changed to Barbed Shot).

What's Different?

I'm going to go through each part of the configuration interface (found via /hekili) and just point out the changes.

General

There is no longer a checkbox for locking the displays.  You can move them by clicking and dragging with the configuration interface open, or you can reposition them by going to the display's options and adjusting the X/Y values.

Toggles

The toggles panel is mostly similar, but the Artifact toggle has been replaced with a Defensives toggle -- this toggle only applies to tanking specializations that have active mitigation recommendations.  

Additionally, both Interrupts and Defensives have a "Show Separately" option which will cause those recommendations to appear in a separate Interrupts/Defensives display (if/when there is a reason to recommend them).

At the bottom of this panel, there will be buttons that link to your specialization's settings, where spec-specific options can be configured.

Displays

In previous versions of Hekili, each specialization needed its own customized displays.  Now, I've standardized up to four displays:

- Primary, shows recommendations based on automatic target detection in single-display mode, or single-target recommendations in dual-display mode.

- AOE, shows multi-target recommendations in dual-display mode.

- Defensives, shows active mitigation or defensive cooldowns for tank specs, when defensives are enabled and configured to show separately.

- Interrupts, shows interrupts, when interrupts are enabled and configured to show separately.

I will likely iterate on this design (i.e., people may want the Primary display to show single-target recommendations without having two displays visible), but this is the core of the design at the present time.  

These displays are shared amongst all specs that use a given profile.  Your Elemental and Enhancement specs don't need you to recustomize your displays for each spec (though you still can, by using different profiles for each).  You can even use the same profile for multiple characters that are different classes, and they can share everything without causing problems.

Share Styles

Another new feature is improved display style sharing.  Before, you could share export strings for each of your displays, but because there were so many potential displays to address, it could be a pain to share them all.  Now, on the Export tab, you can check all the displays you want to share, then click Export Style to create an export string.

In addition to just sharing that string, you can save the export string as a style, and then the string is available on all your characters.  This can be useful to backup display settings and then restore them, or to copy display settings between multiple profiles.

Specialization

Each supported specialization will have options appear under the Specialization section.  The critical elements here are that you can enable/disable the addon per specialization, select from Action Packages, and make adjustments for each specialization without having to have a separate profile.

For instance, by default, Elemental Shamans will have their AOE Target Count set to 3.  This means the AOE display, when shown, will always assume there are at least 3 targets.  Meanwhile, Enhancement Shamans' AOE Target Count is 2 -- they're concerned with AOE when they can proc Crash Lightning on two targets.

Additionally, this makes it easier for ranged specs to default to damage-based target detection rather than using nameplate-based target detection, while melee specs can use both without issue.

This section will also be expanded to include the familiar Abilities and Items configuration options.

Action Packs

If you delved into the addon previously, you used to find that there were multiple action lists for each specialization all listed together in the Action Lists section.  They were often named to show that they were part of a kit ("Retribution: Default", "Retribution: Precombat"), but were technically separated out and independent of one another.

In 8.0, action lists are bundled into Action Packs.  Action Packs are named, have space for a description, are assigned to specific specs, and (if generated from a SimulationCraft profile) have the profile used to create them stored inside.  You can view the SimulationCraft action lists, and you can re-import those action lists in the event you make changes and need to revert it.

Above, you can see where the profile came from, credit to the author, etc.

In the Action Lists tab, advanced users can edit their action lists using SimulationCraft-like syntax, and instead of uninformative titles, the entries can be identified by the assigned ability and the entry's criteria (if applicable).

These Action Packs can be exported to strings as well, though the import feature is temporarily turned off -- it'll be there soon.  I promise.

Issue Reporting / Snapshots

These sections have not changed dramatically, though you'll find that if you report an issue with the addon's recommendations, it will be encouraged that you provide a snapshot of how the addon decided its recommendations (bind a key for snapshotting!).  The snapshot will also include details about your character to assist me with debugging.

Issues and Next Steps

The next major issues to resolve are:

1. Enable Action Pack importing/sharing.

2. Tune up the addon to reduce flickering recommendations.  (In Legion, I implemented "rechecking" which would recheck an action's conditions at specified breakpoints, like when a buff or debuff was falling off.  These were all manually scripted.  Moving forward, I want the addon to automatically identify these breakpoints based on action list criteria and recheck them without having to hardcode them.)

3. Implement the specs that got the most votes from last month's poll (Demonology, first).

4. Update Action Packs as new SimulationCraft profiles or priority lists from other sources become available.

5. Continue to seek out and squish bugs as they appear.

Where to Get It

8.0 alpha builds are now available on Twitch / Curse / CurseForge.  You will need to tell your Twitch client that you want alpha builds.  Don't install 8.0 builds on the live 7.3.5 servers.  It will break your client.

More soon!