21'st Man, The reason WA's need to go.

[ashblond]

All addons should be permanently banned from wow.

A game that needs addons, sims and 3rd party guides is a failure.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

Unless Blizzard designs boss fights in a way where they can communicate stuff to you that the boss is doing(Like boss about to do a mechanic or one of their spells is about to go off cooldown etc etc). These addons seem to just relay the information in a way we can see it competantly. I dunno if Blizzard is gonna simply do away with addons, its like Flying, can't take it away now.

[Swnem]

If you ask me my preference, yes. I think all addons are cheats and should be removed so everyone is playing in equal terms and the game redesigned to take that into account.

With that said, i don't care that much cause i've accepted what the game is and i kind of need them to play optimally.

[Amnaught]

They're so hard you need computer programmers to create cheat programs to deal with them yeah.

Let's not pretend the WoW Classic raiders arent googling the most mathematically efficient ways to defeat much simpler bosses

[antelope591]

The way OP presents this is pretty trollish but he does have a point. There was a mod in Wrath which showed 3D models and pre-renders of boss mechanics that Blizz outright banned. WA's have basically reached that level and fights are now being designed with that in mind. This to me is not a good thing. The unecessary complexity of Mythic fights is a huge factor as to why numbers are down so much for it. Blizz needs to reign it in going forward because this tier its def gotten out of hand.

[Pandragon]

Max said that no-one can play the game at the maximum level and raid-lead at the maximum level at the same time.

Thats completely untrue. I spent years main tanking and raid leading for my guild and my performance never suffered once.

[JusticeGlory]

Spectator mode is something I could get behind. As someone who has RL in the past and is currently still doing so, this'd be a super useful tool. It's not something I'd use often as I also enjoy playing the game, even if it's a bit harder while RL'ing, but it would be a huge help in certain circumstances.

I don't really feel there's a solid argument for having WA's go. WoW does a pretty bad job in my opinion of telling you what's going on sometimes. Besides, other people using WA's and addons don't really effect you.

[Stormspellz]

WA is a problem but also a problem you need WA do understand/know everything that is going on (pvp perspective)

[Aurrora]

There are multiple reasons why Weak Aura's need to go. They actually limit design encounter, they over whelm new players and essentially make an add on required for any kind of content that matters.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXx8ZhIzdRQ

This video opens a lot of holes.

Max admitting he wasn't a strong enough player to raid lead and play the actual game. Basically making the game 21 man raids instead of 20.
Max said he does it because he knows he's the best at it, but that's very subjective, if WA's go away he can't sit there and simply tell people when to push their buttons.

I'd like to see them go.

lol, that ship sailed years ago, and culminated in mythic Archimonde's design. WA didn't force encounter design, encounter design forced WA.

[ohwell]

They're so hard you need computer programmers to create cheat programs to deal with them yeah.

This is one of those posts I wish there was a like option.

"AMG MC and BWL were so easy" as you use your 27 mods to barely get through an encounter in a world where the internet has changed so dramatically.

- - - Updated - - -

There are multiple reasons why Weak Aura's need to go. They actually limit design encounter, they over whelm new players and essentially make an add on required for any kind of content that matters.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXx8ZhIzdRQ

This video opens a lot of holes.

Max admitting he wasn't a strong enough player to raid lead and play the actual game. Basically making the game 21 man raids instead of 20.
Max said he does it because he knows he's the best at it, but that's very subjective, if WA's go away he can't sit there and simply tell people when to push their buttons.

I'd like to see them go.

All add ons should be banned unless they give a cosmetic change.

- - - Updated - - -

lol, that ship sailed years ago, and culminated in mythic Archimonde's design. WA didn't force encounter design, encounter design forced WA.

False fallacies are fun to fabricate and as such you must be having so much fun because that's a lie.

[Byleth]

Holy god that is a bad take. Max said it is more valuable to his raid if he can focus his attention on a singular role (raid lead or tank), not that he is too weak to do both. And if he didnt have WA, he would have another Cooldown timer or addon. There is a reason these teams pay someone to make DBM modules in real time during progression, and they release those packs after the raid. Ion said the 21st thing is cool and an interesting take, so its not likely going away, especially considering it ultimately affects 2-5 raid teams total.

Weak Auras are not the issue.

The fundamental issue is a raid leader trying to do too much themselves.

I am a raid leader, and I delegate out the call outs to people in the best position to do them for any given encounter. For example if I'm tanking Darkvein, I have enough to worry about without having to monitor the fucking anima tanks as well.

Raid leaders just need to learn to let go a bit and trust their teams more.

[Hellobolis]

Can't say I encountered a fight yet where weakauras are required.

I know lots of fights have fancy weakauras created by others, but thinking they are necessary just tells me more about your skill tbh.

debuff tracking is a default thing in the game. Weakauras make it more customizable for your liking though.
Announcing things can be done, but weakauras and bigwigs/dbm can certainly help with that by reducing voice clutter. However, still possible to announce without them as well.

That's in essence what you really need for any raid encounter.

think the first time i really thought "WA required to do this" was fallen avatar mythic. and since that fight the "it's your turn now" WA has appearead on many bosses.

now sure, technically all that WA does is tell you when it's your turn and tell backups when it's their turn in case someone dies/fucks up, but on fights where there are multiple rotating soak teams for multiple mechanics and not much leeway, that's not something a raid leader can do anymore.

or something like aszhara transition soak assignments, no way humans can do that in the time allotted without at least 1 in the 20 humans making a mistake.

it moved past glorified debuff trackers a long time ago.

[cparle87]

My first, and confusing reaction to this is...why would an addon, WA, have anything to do with how Blizzard designs their encounters? They don't take into consideration DBM or WA when coming up with encounters. And new players probably don't use WA or have heard of it.

I've read blue posts where they've said they DO take the existence of DBM and WA into account.

[Hellobolis]

Weak Auras are not the issue.

The fundamental issue is a raid leader trying to do too much themselves.

I am a raid leader, and I delegate out the call outs to people in the best position to do them for any given encounter. For example if I'm tanking Darkvein, I have enough to worry about without having to monitor the fucking anima tanks as well.

Raid leaders just need to learn to let go a bit and trust their teams more.

how did you delegate mythic ra'den?

[Tziva]

The fundamental issue is a raid leader trying to do too much themselves.

I am a raid leader, and I delegate out the call outs to people in the best position to do them for any given encounter. For example if I'm tanking Darkvein, I have enough to worry about without having to monitor the fucking anima tanks as well.

Raid leaders just need to learn to let go a bit and trust their teams more.

LOL I wish needing to "let go" as a raid leader was my problem.

Hey, can someone do callouts for this fight for me?
*crickets*

Someone needs to handle Mechanic X tonight on this fight we've been doing for weeks, who can take care of it?
"well, I guess I can try to figure it out but I don't understand how it works"

Me: I'm going to be late Tuesday, who wants to handle invites?
"Maybe we should just cancel"

[I miss announcing a basic mechanic that you can literally see the boss casting, we wipe]
"your fault, you didn't call it!"

I love the people I raid with -- largely friends for many years -- but helping me out as raid leader is pretty much the last thing any of them have any interest in doing. In fact, anything that makes my job even harder is hilarious for them, so forget trying to actually delegate important tasks. There's a couple people I can count on if I'm really desperate but they aren't always available or/or get tired of being the only person who ever helps. (sorry if any of yall reading this, but you can't even argue)

I feel like my situation is as common, if not more common, than raid leaders who want to monitor and micromanage every task themselves.

[Aurrora]

False fallacies are fun to fabricate and as such you must be having so much fun because that's a lie.

Are you joking? Mythic Archimonde's Wrought Chaos was impossible to handle without an addon showing everyone's positioning.

[kaminaris]

WeakAuras is a response to a problem, not the problem itself. With the current class design, and without WA, I end up tunneling my action bars pretty bad. Blizzard has went completely over the top with encounter design and that's what needs changed.


Blizzard absolutely designs encounters with boss mods and WAs in mind. That's why encounters have gotten more and more and more complex over the years. if they still designed encounters the way they did in 2007-2010, they would be completely trivial to the playerbase. It's impossible to claim WAs doesn't affect encounter design. It very obviously does.

Whether or not that's a problem is up to each individual to decide. I do personally think encounter design has gotten out of hand, and is far too complex. I've felt that way since Heroic Klaxxi in SoO... and it's only gotten worse since then. I think Mythic raiding in general is far too complex. Not too hard, just overly complex.

Quoted for truth.

That is probably what needs to be said couple times. OP take is irrelevant and addons have nothing to do with actual problems.

[Metrox]

There are multiple reasons why Weak Aura's need to go. They actually limit design encounter, they over whelm new players and essentially make an add on required for any kind of content that matters.

This comment actually made me chuckle. Weak Aura is now the destroying game design?
My priest runs Weak Aura to.............................show when the Fortitude buff is missing on itself or a team member. Sorry that:

A. I don't believe that WA has any bearing on instance design.

B. Max is entitled to his "tortured soul" take on raiding. If the Top 100 Mythic Guilds all agreed with him, then I might have some interest. Even at that point, this would be the opinion of less than 1% of all players. Not sure how much weight I place on that amount of players.

Stay safe and have fun!

[Gasparde]

Yes, remove WAs (and since we're at it, Boss Mods as well) and go back to the glorious times of raid encounters having 2 mechanics because any more than that would become quite literally impossible to coordinate between 20 players.

I much rather have insanely retarded and stupid shit like Archimonde that melts your brain even with fucking WAs and whatever other addons than having the pinnacle of encounter design be shit like Artificer where you have like 3 abilities randomly overlapping with each other from time to time... and nothing else.

[chorx]

WoW has always been extensible. If you don't like the extensibility of the game, I really don't understand why you're playing it at this point. I'm not often the person to whine and say "play something else" -- it's just a very specific nitpick when people complain about something that has literally been there from the beginning of the game. Of course the tools have evolved over the past 16 years. Not only have tools evolved, the way people think about the game has changed, Many endgame players have gotten REALLY REALLY good by yesterdays standard.