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

[Nobleshield]

To be honest I think the game would be better off if they closed a lot of the API that add-ons use. They shouldn't rely on add-ons to do their work for them. It's well past time they build in most things to the game itself.

WoW is like the only MMORPG where add-ons are "required". They should have gone the FFXIV approach by now.

[Elkfingers]

I would say yes, they are too hard.
They have complicated the raid so much that the only real way to complete the encounter is with a massive amount of assistance tools to basically tell you where to go, and what to do.
Raids aren't really much about fighting a boss, but following a script now.

Yeah that's not true at all. Weakauras and bossmods provide players with cues , but the players still have to make good use of that information while producing as close to optimal output as possible.

How mechanics actually get handled in a live raid situation is 90% down to individual player skill. It doesn't matter how many weakauras you throw at an underperforming raid team. It's not going to make them any better at actually using the information available to them to good effect.

The same goes for raid calls. Players in the raid should already be aware of what they have to do throughout the fight. The raid leader is there as a backup, and to coordinate any changes that need to be made to the strategy on the fly. Every boss ever has had a strategy that needs to be followed. You can call that a script if you want, but it doesn't change the fact that you actually need to execute the strategy effectively to make progress.

If it was just a case of following a predefined set of instructions which don't change at all from pull to pull then everyone would be 10/10 Mythic by now. Yes - addons and a good raid leader can make up for a portion of the skill deficit within a raid, but anybody who's tried to teach a group of absolute fucking monkeys to kill a boss will tell you that you still need something to work with when it comes to the people in your raid.

[exsanguinate]

Yesterday I raided mythic without any weak aura and big wigs for the first time. (just because I forgot to turn them on again and I was too lazy to relog during raiding)
It's anything but easy, even if you know what the boss is doing and farm status. And yes, such tools make it massively easier.

Playing like this is like you are really paying attention to stuff in a different way.

[ztkraptor]

Yeah that's not true at all. Weakauras and bossmods provide players with cues , but the players still have to make good use of that information while producing as close to optimal output as possible.

How mechanics actually get handled in a live raid situation is 90% down to individual player skill. It doesn't matter how many weakauras you throw at an underperforming raid team. It's not going to make them any better at actually using the information available to them to good effect.

The same goes for raid calls. Players in the raid should already be aware of what they have to do throughout the fight. The raid leader is there as a backup, and to coordinate any changes that need to be made to the strategy on the fly. Every boss ever has had a strategy that needs to be followed. You can call that a script if you want, but it doesn't change the fact that you actually need to execute the strategy effectively to make progress.

If it was just a case of following a predefined set of instructions which don't change at all from pull to pull then everyone would be 10/10 Mythic by now. Yes - addons and a good raid leader can make up for a portion of the skill deficit within a raid, but anybody who's tried to teach a group of absolute fucking monkeys to kill a boss will tell you that you still need something to work with when it comes to the people in your raid.

Umm...you literally are explaining a script.
You would be surprised how difficult it is to have people follow basic tasks without failing. Saying "Everyone would be 10/10 if it was just scripted"

Dude, these add ons literally tell you where to stand, when to run, where to run to, how long until the next boss ability so on and so forth.


Is it your position that mythic raiding would be fully cleared without any of these addons enabled? All 20 players will be able to fight the boss without having any addons tell them when something is occuring or when to run, or how to line up or how far to stand from one another?

[Revamp Man]

99.9% of players dont worry about this

it would be like you complaining about the new jetstream model having slightly smaller wheels unless you pay an extra 5k for them

[Wildpantz]

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.

Holy shit that's not what he said at all. You really need to lie to get your point across.

[Revamp Man]

Umm...you literally are explaining a script.
You would be surprised how difficult it is to have people follow basic tasks without failing. Saying "Everyone would be 10/10 if it was just scripted"

Dude, these add ons literally tell you where to stand, when to run, where to run to, how long until the next boss ability so on and so forth.


Is it your position that mythic raiding would be fully cleared without any of these addons enabled? All 20 players will be able to fight the boss without having any addons tell them when something is occuring or when to run, or how to line up or how far to stand from one another?

it is possible but blizzard has designed encounters around these addons since legion

if you are raiding mythic then having an addon isnt a big deal

[intenz]

It's the nature of PvE being scripted content that it can be abused. If people didn't use addons they could make 3rd party software to do it much like in D3 with turbohud. Just accept that's how raiding is and deal with it. If you want to actually test yourself as a player then do arena instead. Most of these cutting edge raiders have to get boosted to 1800.

[potis]

Some people think raid leading equates to: "I have leader icon. I make group. I decide you not come today"

I doubt its that, but it baffles me how clueless some people are.

As a raid leader for 16 years that HAS to babysit people 24/7 otherwise they go from "low performance players" to "WHY ARE YOU THIS BAD" in a matter of seconds, i can say Max is 100% correct, there are times where the information intake is too much to produce proper outtake so they wont fuck things up.

But i adapted into slack mode HC and casual Mythic push if we are 20 after the farm status, many of these slackers unsub repeatedly so my job isnt as hard but the point stands, if you stop the actual raid leading, the chance someone fucks up completely, despite having done it before 20 times, rises immensely.

And the game design has changed to be like that, worse part is they are turning many game mechanics into personal weight rather than raid weight, so you have people failing left and right, my mental health is not the best lately because of that

[Zephire]

I only use WA to help me with things I can't fuck up. Not because I do fuck up all the time but because when I do, I wipe the raid. With 20 people and such a mechanic, you'd get no where if even a single person fails each attempt. It has nothing to do with WA. It's a unforgiving mechanic that shouldn't be part of a team exercise.

WA is helpful but far from mandatory. You have so many indicators that the standard ui provides. You just need to identify some. Examples:

Big thing happens when boss reach 100% energy.
A medium thing seem to happen every 25% energy.
When boss screams X then Y will happen.
At Z% hp, K happens.
If you pop cds at pull, then something will happen right about when the CD ends.
On the third of P cast, ability R will overlap.
The tank debuff will be re-applied at about 12 sec left of the debuff, better use mitigation!
And so on.

The only times you really could use DBM, WA etc is when Blizzard have failed to be graphical about an ability. It could be that it lacks sound, that the boss say nothing, no cast time, lacking visuals etc. When it becomes really difficult to distinguish the ability.

As we do on these forums I would like to pull a number out of my arse and say that probably more than 90% of the abilities does not need a WA or DBM or BigWings. It's helpful in most cases but mandatory? Com'on....

... if you stop the actual raid leading, the chance someone fucks up completely, despite having done it before 20 times, rises immensely....

Indeed. I can only speak for myself but if I'm not active during a fight I lose focus, sometimes. Heck, our whole raid have focus dips. It's helpful with active leading, it's inspiring and invigorating. In anything but the top guilds people are not all on the same level or have the same dedication or the same goal or anything in between, which makes everything raidleading that much more needed and difficult :P

[Kokolums]

The game could use a proper spectating tool so we could coach ingame rather than from someone else's screen. Coaching is a natural evolution and i'm honestly surprised it took this long before anyone tried actually doing it. I've been daydreaming about forgoing raidleading in favor of coaching since wod, and i'm sure someone else has had the same idea way before that too.

Coaching has been going on since vanilla. I don't know who the guy in that video is or why he feels the need to name drop different people and give them false credit for inventing it / popularizing it. Seems like a douche.

- - - Updated - - -

If you want to actually test yourself as a player then do arena instead.

Now you've done it.

An MMO is about interacting with large numbers of people in an immense game world. arena is a tiny group fighting each other in a sandbox. Arenda needs to be ripped from the game. It is embarrassing that it even exists, and don't beat your chest at how good you are at it.

[xero5141]

First off, he's the raid leader of the best guild atm, not the 'best raid leader'. That's a weird jump.

I'd be interested to know what other metric you'd use to measure the best raid leader.

[Onikaroshi]

If the base wow ui had better information display we wouldn't need things like weakauras, but the base UI sucks for information display.

CD tracking? all the way down at the action bar level. Procs? Up by the buffs or down at the action bars, some get a nice "power auras" middle screen animation, but not most, so it's not like blizzard doesn't know it's good to have info easily visible.

And speaking of buffs/debuffs, those are well out of viewing area.

Only thing blizzard has really gotten right about the base ui is the the raid frames, and even those are lacking somewhat.

[Wramp]

.........doesnt require WA's.
People who compete for world first are playing an entirely different game than all of us. They make extreme sacrifices to get every edge they can.

I was going to write this long take on why the OP has a terrible outlook on Addons and the game in general, then i found this post that said everything i wanted to in much shorter fashion

[Hellobolis]

Set order of soaks that never changed. Have 2 people as stand in. If one in soak order got target first that players says they need stand in on x soak. X is their position in order. Then the stand in takes that spot and it continue as normal.

I knew that I'd always second at soaking the lightning. So I always to orange, I think we used. If I got it first I said "I can't soak 2nd" then the reserve went to take 2nd soak. Nothing else changed in soak order.

Same goes for the Red circle soak when it was our ranged turn to do it.

That's it. A list of soak orders everyone should know instantly and one or two calls at debuff application if a reserve is required.

That wa caused more issues than it solved. I got frustrated at my guild because people thought it was required but it took so many tries to just get it working and even then it bugs out often to confuse people.

I just removed it out of sight and did my soak orders with no issues at all. Ra'den is a fight where the perception of necessity caused the necessity and made the fight more complex than it was.

Thing is, if someone makes a weakaura people seem to think that "oh nice, we don't have to think about x" and that makes it required. Instead of thinking what the weakaura actually do and what the fight actually require. Its a glorified static list that replaces 2 spots. That's. It. That's all it was.

i do remember that WA took a lot of setting up. (but it seems WAs since then have made that easier).

i guess ultimately for raden it did come down to do you want to memorize the soak order and hope everybody can keep track of vs have it as a list on your screen and hope everybody can keep track of it.

either way a single mistake was pretty much a wipe, no way any raidleader can on the fly adapt to mistakes on that sort of thing. and i guess that's ultimately the crux of it, on the more complicated fights there is so much going you need to either pre-determine everything before the pull or have an addon do it, and in either case as soon as anything deviates from the plan you are screwed.

which to me feels very different from the "a dps died, we can't meet the dps check anymore, but with more gear we can recover in the future" kind of mistake.

[Kumorii]

i do remember that WA took a lot of setting up. (but it seems WAs since then have made that easier).

i guess ultimately for raden it did come down to do you want to memorize the soak order and hope everybody can keep track of vs have it as a list on your screen and hope everybody can keep track of it.

either way a single mistake was pretty much a wipe, no way any raidleader can on the fly adapt to mistakes on that sort of thing. and i guess that's ultimately the crux of it, on the more complicated fights there is so much going you need to either pre-determine everything before the pull or have an addon do it, and in either case as soon as anything deviates from the plan you are screwed.

which to me feels very different from the "a dps died, we can't meet the dps check anymore, but with more gear we can recover in the future" kind of mistake.

You don't need to memorize a soak order...you need to know if you soak the 1st, 2nd, 3rd or 4th... and if you are 1st or 2nd as reserve...
That's it. I don't need to know which order others in my raid are... even though that comes naturally after like 3 pulls.

ERT already have that note functionality to list which order you are in.

We have soak orders on Huntsman. No issues to remember which order you are in without a WA changing on the fly. And as you mentioned. 1 mistake is most likely a wipe, and that was the case with or without that weakaura. If a mistake happened and lets say the lighting jumped to the wrong player because they are out of position. All you needed to do was to move to the correct marker with it. It's not a daunting task.

I honestly can't understand how Ra'den is seen as some complex fight. Especially when soak orders and moving to markers are the BASIC tactic for almost any boss. With various caveats.

I do agree on 1 mistake leading to inevitable doom is bad design on fights, but that has little to do with WA's.

[Hellobolis]

You don't need to memorize a soak order...you need to know if you soak the 1st, 2nd, 3rd or 4th... and if you are 1st or 2nd as reserve...
That's it. I don't need to know which order others in my raid are... even though that comes naturally after like 3 pulls.

i never had to do that stuff i just remember most post-progress wipes were because of people being in the wrong spot at the wrong time. usually the first person with 2nd lightning or lightning jumping into melee cause someone didn't know if they were left or right marker.

We have soak orders on Huntsman. No issues to remember which order you are in without a WA changing on the fly. And as you mentioned. 1 mistake is most likely a wipe, and that was the case with or without that weakaura. If a mistake happened and lets say the lighting jumped to the wrong player because they are out of position. All you needed to do was to move to the correct marker with it. It's not a daunting task.

Better example in current raid is destroyer. once you have 2-3 deaths on that, in theory a good raidleader can adjust groups on the fly each new miasma, in practise it's just a downward spiral to a wipe. a WA could do that adjustment for you and even tell you when to soak/not to soak, but it's the 3rd boss so it's not tuned that hard so nobody has bothered with it.

huntsman is bad because it's a "you need x immunes to proceed" fight. and now that i think about it, shamans are also awfull mandatory on several fights. it's almost expected that people reroll for specific fights now, and if nerfing some addons can make it so those requirements can be relaxed i'm all for it.

[valax]

Bruuuhhh , The only weakauras I use are buff timers and my own Holy power tracker . Just like the 98% of playerbase use them and find them very useful.

The concept of external raid leading is cool imo , and it makes sense to have someone assigned to coordinate the players like in any competitive sport scenario.
OP what's the thing that makes you most butthurt? are you a top 10 Mythic raider? Are you a blizzard encounter designer? Or simply are you just a normal joe complaining about stuff that doesn't affect you in the slightest?
Gee, of all the shady shit going around RTWF this is probably the least outraging one.

[Kumorii]

i never had to do that stuff i just remember most post-progress wipes were because of people being in the wrong spot at the wrong time. usually the first person with 2nd lightning or lightning jumping into melee cause someone didn't know if they were left or right marker.




Better example in current raid is destroyer. once you have 2-3 deaths on that, in theory a good raidleader can adjust groups on the fly each new miasma, in practise it's just a downward spiral to a wipe. a WA could do that adjustment for you and even tell you when to soak/not to soak, but it's the 3rd boss so it's not tuned that hard so nobody has bothered with it.

huntsman is bad because it's a "you need x immunes to proceed" fight. and now that i think about it, shamans are also awfull mandatory on several fights. it's almost expected that people reroll for specific fights now, and if nerfing some addons can make it so those requirements can be relaxed i'm all for it.

Reason why I brought up Huntsman is because of the soak order and if you get targeted while you need to immunity soak for others you need to adjust on the fly. Similar to Ra'den. I think we are straying towards just talking about good / bad design with bosses which is fine, but it's not the original point which is that Ra'den WA never was "required" or necessity and very few bosses, if any, requires an WA.

Hungering markers are deployed by bigwigs and dbm and people just need to move to said markers and then back to your own group.
We got another WA similar to Ra'den for hungering but even that one was unnecessary since you start to learn when you should soak and when you should not based on the boss mechanics which always comes in the same order at the same time in the fight.

Also I don't really agree on that it's the raider leaders job to keep track of everything in a fight... if one of our groups got to few people because all of them got the miasma that group should say "hey we are short at X marker" and then raid leader calls 1-2 people to go to that marker for this miasma round.

[anon5123]

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.

This. If I didn't have WeakAuras, I'd spend 90% of my time staring at my action bar. I just use WeakAuras to have a much more clear view of my abilities, cooldowns, etc. so I don't have to tunnelvision my action bar.