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

[Tradu]

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.



That sounds like a "Max" issue and not an "everyone else" issue. I've had no issue leading encounters without WA and I rarely use it for anything. I can think of only two encounters in the last two raid tiers that I've even used a WA for. It's not required and people can get along fine without it.

They definitely do take addons into consideration. They've talked about this in multiple interviews over many years.

And OP twisted Max' words to an insane degree to come up with his post.

[Specialka]

The delusion is strong in you, you literally raided with people that never ever even died once? So basically if your/their character had 1 life, you would still be around? hahaha

I do not raid with people that dies with a boss that has 2 mecanics like in MC (or even BWL for that matters).

[Tradu]

They've even said themselves they have to take that stuff into consideration.

There's two options: Simpler fights with no addons, or current fights with addons. As someone mentioned, Sludgefist is a good example of a fight that's not Vanilla/TBC levels of boring while still being understandable, but those bosses tend to be few & far between. I'd say Krosus in Nighthold also fits that bill, which was also a DPS check boss rather than a challenging mechanical boss.

I don't know what I'd prefer in all honesty. I think they're trying to somewhat dampen the all-powerful boss mods/WAs by having bosses with flexible spell-queuing in Castle Nathria, but all that's led to is bosses that have horrible fecking overlaps randomly that just shouldn't exist (Xymox & Council come to mind). The very concept of "stop DPS or we'll might force a stupid overlap" is horrible for farm raiding

This is the problem. They'd need to put a lot of effort into preventing bullshit overlaps if they were to make bosses more random intentionally(which I don't think they're doing, I just think that spell queueing is a terrible system for boss mechanics but they can't come up with anything better)

- - - Updated - - -

It doesn't matter.

21st person RLing is not going to be a factor for anything but a TINY handful of guilds, competing at the absolute highest level. It's irrelevant as a concept for everyone else, and designing around it just because of the two guilds in the world that do it is a very questionable approach.

It made a big difference for us this tier. It allowed more comp flexibility and meant our (extremely good) raidleader could focus only on that instead of also having to play his character on the last 3 bosses.

- - - Updated - - -

Maybe you should watch the video, he admits he wasn't good enough to do both and still get world 1st.

Which means we've come to a point where reading out addons at exact moments is more important than the game itself. If you can't kill a boss without addon's the addon shouldn't be in the game.

End of story.

- - - Updated - - -





In actuality there were two fights where weak aura's could hold your hand completely this tier, both of them were so bitterly received by the raiding community blizzard had to change them.

Again, my issues are two fold, and none of them have anything to do with Max personally, I'm using him as an example because he's the "best of the best" and the best of the best, need someone reading out add-ons to be the best.

If you take the add-ons out of the game, suddenly Max doesn't need to be the 21'st man.

It's almost as if the way you become the best is by maximizing your chances of success by any means necessary. Having people outside of the actual raid doing the raidleading was an extremely obvious way to improve chances of success, and if anything it's insane that it took this long for it to really start being a thing.

- - - Updated - - -

So you're saying I can't use whats available while still not liking it is? Grow up and stay on topic.

I think WA's and a lot of addons are basically playing the game for us right now, and encounters are being designed with them in mind, which in itself is a HUGE problem. The fact the BEST raid leader on earth DOESNT PLAY THE GAME during progression proves I'm right.

Did you know that many of the best military leaders didn't/don't run around the actual battlefield in real world battles?

- - - Updated - - -

personally I'd be okay with all addons being removed.

If the default UI wasn't absolute dogshit, maybe. Addons have also driven every single improvement to the default UI, so getting rid of addons would make the default UI stagnate.

- - - Updated - - -

All addons should be permanently banned from wow.

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

True, a game that people care enough about to spend hundreds/thousands of hours on creating tools, guides etc for is a failure. Definitely wouldn't want people to actually get invested in your game.

- - - Updated - - -

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

You're delusional. Your performance definitely suffered, because you only have so much mental bandwidth available. Being able to focus all of it on just your own character vs having to also call out things for other people inevitably means there's a difference in performance.

- - - Updated - - -

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.

Yes, if you've always called out that mechanic and then randomly don't, that's 100% your fault because you've conditioned your raiders to expect that callout and to be able to rely on it.

- - - Updated - - -

yes .

they have have be too hard and overtuned for years now - since cata it was only worse and worse

there is a reason why WoLK was golden age of both game as whole and raiding.

because it was tuned perfecly.

after that it went downhill and so went game overall.

this is direct fault of catering only to top 5%.

CN is prime example of that - you have so many overlaps of mechanics even on hc that it makes many encounters simply not fun . also stuff hits for way way to much effectively 1-2 shoting you if you fuck up even once and many times you have split seconds to make decisions even in very hectiv sitations. very very unfun design .

There's 4 raid difficulties to choose from. Having one that's very hard is perfectly fine.

- - - Updated - - -

DBM are just inverse combat timer...
Start a combat timer and then you learn by which minute X mechanic start etc etc...

Except you'd need to restart those timers on phase changes, or start separate timers on phase changes because some mechanics don't reset their CD.

- - - Updated - - -

I was already in multiple top 50 world raiding guilds...
You would be surprised how mad some raid leaders get and how many people get replaced for not following the script.

And yes, you can make food just as good as a whatever star chef, so long as you have their tools(aka gear) just by following the script.
What do you think they do? Put a spell on the food? It is quite literally following instructions to make the food...
It is less about their "skill" and more about their tools that they have to accomplish the stuff.


Again, turn off the add-ons and I bet you bosses at this level don't die.
Its a problem because add-ons force blizzard to make fights more and more intense and hard because you essentially are playing against people following a script and don't really have a dynamic to it.

Yes, let's completely ignore their experience and skill in using those tools.

- - - Updated - - -

IMHO the main problem is encounter design.
In many mythic encounters I need to press my CDs and trinkets at a perfect time. Every try, or the boss won't die.
With the default UI you will forget when to press the stuff.

With weak auras I will press my CDs exactly at the right time even after 100 tryes after I long lost focus.

Blizzard said they will make encounters less dependant on addons, that was about 10 years ago. Nothing has changed.

Pretty sure they've never said that. They've locked down certain parts of the addon API here and there, but they definitely haven't tried to make encounters less dependant on addons.

[AeneasBK]

I don't think anyone would argue it's NECESSARY. But it's a very easy way of making things a lot easier and increasing your performance, so if you care about min/maxing your performance there is little reason not to use it. If you don't care about the min/max then by all means do whatever you want as long as your group is cool with it.

In retail, sure, in Classic? Rofl.

In much the same way, WA or addons of any kind aren't strictly NECESSARY to beat mythic - but not having them adds a significant extra layer of difficulty.

Sure, but haven't developers been on record in interviews explicitly stating that they had to take addons like DBM and Weakauras into consideration when designing encounters since... Cataclysm or even earlier? That would at least suggest that their requirement is a lot greater, I know at one point they baked a bunch of WA stuff into the UI. Is there a mythic clearing guild that makes a point of *not* using them at all and still clears all the content when it's current? (Genuine curiosity, else I'd think it safe to assume that *every* guild clearing mythic raids when they are current is using bossmod addons and some form of weakauras)...

They also work against certain forms of degeneracy. If, for example, we no longer had addons, world-first guilds would still do whatever they could to emulate the benefits of addons. Instead of WAs counting things down or whatever, they would for example have several people watching from outside, with stopwatches and notepads (or their equivalents) to manually keep track of things and call them out. There's no way to regulate that, and rather than "forcing" top-tier players into jumping through ridiculous hoops like that, allowing addons is a much more elegant solution.

I can't really comment the whole "world first" race side of PvE hasn't ever really interested me but I'd argue that "who gives a toss what 0.0001% of guilds do to compete with each other" - allowing addons as an 'elegant solution' to a problem 0.01% of guilds would encounter, seems very much cutting off the nose to spite the face. But that's just my opinion, it's cool that the majority of WoW players want big glaring sirens and alerts from a 3rd party program to tell them their DPS boost ability has procced or the boss has cast a certain ability. It's just a shame that the game is tuned around them.

- - - Updated - - -

Having people outside of the actual raid doing the raidleading was an extremely obvious way to improve chances of success, and if anything it's insane that it took this long for it to really start being a thing.

My guild was always super super casual but I still wanted an "observer mode" so I could occasionally raid lead from outside the group. Mostly on those nights in Cata when pickings were slim and we'd be running 2 10 man groups, being able to raid lead both at the same time would have been awesome. Also would mean I could give up my spot to someone else who really wanted it. Sorry, as you were

[Rageonit]

Maybe you should watch the video, he admits he wasn't good enough to do both and still get world 1st.
Which means we've come to a point where reading out addons at exact moments is more important than the game itself. If you can't kill a boss without addon's the addon shouldn't be in the game.
End of story.

I think you got two things confused here. First you talk about addons needed to get a world 1st, then about needing them to kill a boss. Those are two different things - he never said you are unable to kill a boss if you don't use said addons to the max of your capabilities - he said you won't get world 1st without it. Which is rather obvious, since in a race of the very best players in the world, you really need to use every small thing to your advantage.
But that hardly means good players are unable to kill bosses without addons. Pretty sure they can, it will only take more practice and patience to learn the ins & outs of every encounter (and maybe a bit higher ilvl to offset the fact that you won't be able to use every cooldown as effectively). But why do that, if the addons exist? Only to prove some point?

[schwarzkopf]

So you think raids are too hard?

Not at all, he thinks they are unnecessarily complex.

[Yas-Queen Rochana]

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.

I'm not so sure about that?

I can't recall many raidbosses over the past few expansions in which almost every World top 3000 guild didn't use weakauras to try and deal with certain mechanics. I'd argue that some raidmechanics on mythic might be even entirely impossible if you didn't have an addon for them (eg. the Mekkatorque robots come to mind).

[Kumorii]

I'm not so sure about that?

I can't recall many raidbosses over the past few expansions in which almost every World top 3000 guild didn't use weakauras to try and deal with certain mechanics. I'd argue that some raidmechanics on mythic might be even entirely impossible if you didn't have an addon for them (eg. the Mekkatorque robots come to mind).

What addon was required for robots? iirc we just jumped in a called who would say the colors for 2 people and afterwards 1 called his. We used announcer to see the names over the robots easier due to blizzard UI being shit by default. I wouldn't say it's impossible without it though. Since you can just call your own name.

[Yas-Queen Rochana]

What addon was required for robots? iirc we just jumped in a called who would say the colors for 2 people and afterwards 1 called his.

I did it the other day with a pug (having gotten CE Jaina myself while the expansion was current), and it just was incredibly hard to see who was in which robot without a WA that either spammed local chat with your name above your head or something similar. There is barely enough time to do it properly with an addon (in my recollection of scoring a world top 500 kill on it), so doing it without seems absurdly hard, it seems to me then to have been designed with WAs / addons in mind.

[ztkraptor]

Yes, let's completely ignore their experience and skill in using those tools.

Having the time to repeat the same thing over and over again and follow the script isn't "skill"

Want to hit top dps? There is literally an add-on that tells you what to press and when to press it.
Then you add that in with following the script of the add-ons and it just takes time, anyone can do it.

[Hulkovius]

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

No it helps raiders to kill em faster with less gear/ resets and pay less attention to voice lines or boss animations.
It's definetly not a must have. For the vast majority of the raiders. To the top 0.001% yes it's required.

[Loveliest]

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.

Yes they do. There was an interview and they said they design raids knowing DBM is a thing. Trying to find it, but I remember this clearly because of one of my friends who refuses to use the addon even to this day.

[Tradu]

My guild was always super super casual but I still wanted an "observer mode" so I could occasionally raid lead from outside the group. Mostly on those nights in Cata when pickings were slim and we'd be running 2 10 man groups, being able to raid lead both at the same time would have been awesome. Also would mean I could give up my spot to someone else who really wanted it. Sorry, as you were

Yeah, exactly. I know people have been doing it to some degree for many years, or wanted to but didn't have the tools. It's just such an obvious thing to do, looking at loads of real life examples(or even esports like CS:GO where it was briefly a thing)

- - - Updated - - -

Having the time to repeat the same thing over and over again and follow the script isn't "skill"

Want to hit top dps? There is literally an add-on that tells you what to press and when to press it.
Then you add that in with following the script of the add-ons and it just takes time, anyone can do it.

That addon(Hekili/HeroDamage) won't be able to tell you the right answer in every situation. And discounting experience is just absurd, that's how you build up any skill.

[Xires]

OPs take is dumb, but I wanna touch on this a bit.

This is nonsense.

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.

This 100%^^^^

Infact, Blizzard had even stated years ago that they design encounters around the fact that we have these add-ons. Without them it would be impossible to beat these raids unless you were a WF team.
Raid encounters are far more complex today then they were in vanilla. Like the OP said...if you wanna know what raids would boil down to without them...we'd have vanilla and maybe even TBC style raids because anymore complex and well over 95% of the playerbase is screwed.

- - - Updated - - -

Weakauras definitely are gamebreaking at times.
The biggest offender I can remember was the Archimonde one with the map for beams which just trivialized the mechanic completely.

But I don't think Weakauras should be removed. It's an excellent addon with a huge variety of uses. I would like to see some more limits put on what it can do though.

I did that fight and beat it. I'd like to see raiders defeat that mechanic without a WA. Infact, that mechanic was definitely built considering we had the WA for it. Because their is no way your whole raid could stand in the right spot and not nuke people without it. And even then with it...took a little bit of practice.

[ztkraptor]

That addon(Hekili/HeroDamage) won't be able to tell you the right answer in every situation. And discounting experience is just absurd, that's how you build up any skill.

It will put you in the top 3 of your guild 100% every time.

I'm not discounting experience, Im saying they can't do the fights without addons. That means the fights are being built based on knowing people have addons its a cyclical thing.

[Tradu]

It will put you in the top 3 of your guild 100% every time.

I'm not discounting experience, Im saying they can't do the fights without addons. That means the fights are being built based on knowing people have addons its a cyclical thing.

It definitely won't. It doesn't account for holding CDs for burn phases or add spawns, for example. It also doesn't have the power to make classes balanced.

[Tumile]

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.

while on a base of principle I agree that WA's are objectively bad, I also prefer to keep them simply because of how piss poor the base UI is, and the only way to get rid of them is to get rid of addons.

having the leader sit out and coach from the side isnt a 1st in wow. people have done it in every game the moment it turned competitive, League, CSGO, Dota, etc. being able to fully focus on strategic and tactical components without having to worry about gameplay is simply insanely efficient, and the only deterent is that people would want to play themselves, but the moment you turn anything into an E-sport and theres more to it than just playing a video game, this has happened.

- - - Updated - - -

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

no? you can easily do every fight without any addons. they are mostly to keep track of other players in ur raids, and allowing you to play the game for them since finding 20 competent people isnt possible.

[ztkraptor]

It definitely won't. It doesn't account for holding CDs for burn phases or add spawns, for example. It also doesn't have the power to make classes balanced.

It will. lol. and yes it has functionality to change its functionality if certain number of ads are around.

Who said anything about balancing a class?

[Tradu]

It will. lol. and yes it has functionality to change its functionality if certain number of ads are around.

Who said anything about balancing a class?

Hekili and HeroDamage don't take into account adds spawning/vulnerability windows in the future and whether you should hold CDs for those, no. And it can't make you top 3 100% if you're playing like... Beast Mastery, because the spec is not good. You can't guarantee that it'll make you top 3, because that depends entirely on the rest of the raid/guild.

[Frozenbro]

It is the other way around. Because blizzard is trying so hard to counter top world guilds, all the rest suffers. Tools will exist regardless. But if the need (demand) to have such elaborate addons/wa would go down because of SIMPLER encounter designs, the supply will also go down.

Nobody forces blizzard, thats ridiculous.

They cant exactly go back that easily, if they somehow designed an easy raid so you dont need giga specific weak auras, it would get meme'd on, just like Emerald Nightmare was, its just how it is, and if they wanted to they could remove the use of them just like they were against the radar thing on archimonde.

And to the "all the rest suffers", who suffers specifically? Hall of Fame guilds and some Cutting Edge guilds only if any (?), those are the only players that experience the actual real encounters pre nerf, everyone else tackle the nerfed content, so thats a tiny part of the community.