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

[ro9ue]

I think currently the best designed boss is Mythic Sludgefist.

Why? Because he doesn't have a billion different mechanics, he does a couple of things but those REALLY hurt. WAs on that fight sure are helpful, but you can definitely play this boss without them. Most other fights you feel like you are actively making the boss 10 times harder if you dont use WAs.

And I do think it is a very, very valid concern that raiding (Mythic in particular) has become massively dependent on third party addons. You shouldn't need to install tons of third party weak auras just to be able to do bosses effectively. That's just a broken game.

This is a good example also because when you get the gist of what the mechanics are... it's all readable and obvious. There are so many raid mechanics where you have to read the debuff or the spell effects don't really signal clearly what you're supposed to do.

Making a big guy run into a pillar and moving out of falling debris just intuitively makes sense.

[Tyris Flare]

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.

lol if you think this is true

[Drusin]

over whelm new players

Don't use it?

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WAs on that fight sure are helpful, but you can definitely play this boss without them.

Ok, so you've opened a new perspective for me. I use WA's for more than whatever fight stuff you guys are talking about (this reply isn't directed at you Enigma, you just made the comment that provoked the thought ).

[Toybox]

lol if you think this is true

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

[MHMabrito]

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 time 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.

... man come on

[Biomega]

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.

[ONCHEhap]

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.

21st person RLing is a thing everywhere,the difference is that the 21st person is a third party who made the WAs everyone is using and not a direct member of the guild

[Daedius]

Weak Auras does so much more than just boss fights... you can literally make an entire UI Hud with it... it's one of the most versatile addons, and you're being beyond narrow minded to think otherwise.

[Zka]

So you think raids are too hard?

I'd say unnecessarily complex. Some encounters are complex to the degree of absurdity.
The solution is proper raid design aimed at normal people, not banning addons.

[TrollHunter3000]

I'd be curious to see if Blizzard raid tests with specific addons like Weak Auras. If so, why aren't they apart of the game?

Imagine thinking blizzard raid tests themselves.

[Azerate]

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.

No, that's just your bullshit interpretation. He never said anything like that.

No matter what you do to the game, an outside RL will always have better capabilities to raid-lead. Is that something the game should be balanced around? No, of course not. Most people just want to play the game and they won't be stepping out to be the "21st man".

[xero5141]

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.

How could they not take those into consideration? They absolutely do, it's almost impossible they don't. Why else would there be such a sharp increase in difficulty over the years? Players getting better at the game? Not likely.

Go do mythic CN with no raiding addon and see how it goes. It would be next to impossible unless you already know the fights inside and out because of those addons.

[Soon-TM]

I'm of the opinion that the baseline UI should tell you everything you need to know for all raid encounters, all the way from Mythic to LFR. And no, dungeon/raid journal is nice, but in no way enough. Even on something (relatively) not too complicated as HC Carapace in 8.3, the difference between playing with and without WA was night and day. Addons shouldn't have that kind of impact in gameplay.

[Cracked]

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.

Yes and no. It's important to design class mechanics that reward skilled play. But when that skill part (timing / stacks / positioning) can be made pretty trivial with code, it's an issue in itself.

[Baconeggcheese]

What an odd take away from that video.

Its like you have this idea in your head and then you warped what was said in that video to try and back the stance you had already taken.

[Xravis]

Why does it affect you at all are you saying max is not one of the best players and raid leaders in the world? They only started 21st man in Nya and now other guilds have adopted it aswell and they are still beating them. Also take in a lot of these players have been playing since classic or tbc they were good back then theyre good now the tools have changed and they have adapted but even if you take away all addons they will still be the best in the world.

[Baconeggcheese]

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 dunno about that, I don't think they design for any particular addon but I'd be amazed if they designed without addons in mind at all.

It would actually be horrendous if they truly didn't think about addons whatsoever when they designed an encounter. If anything I think they think about them heavily so that they can design encounters that are not completely trivialized by such tools. The addons challenge and allow their designers to be more creative than they otherwise could be.

I have no doubt that encounter design would look completely different if not for the existence of these addons.

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.

Its an "OP taking what was said and twisting it into something completely different to suit his argument" issue.

[Stormbreed]

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.

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.

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I dunno about that, I don't think they design for any particular addon but I'd be amazed if they designed without addons in mind at all.

It would actually be horrendous if they truly didn't think about addons whatsoever when they designed an encounter. If anything I think they think about them heavily so that they can design encounters that are not completely trivialized by such tools. The addons challenge and allow their designers to be more creative than they otherwise could be.

I have no doubt that encounter design would look completely different if not for the existence of these addons.



Its an "OP taking what was said and twisting it into something completely different to suit his argument" issue.

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.

[Biomega]

21st person RLing is a thing everywhere,the difference is that the 21st person is a third party who made the WAs everyone is using and not a direct member of the guild

That's a flawed comparison. By that logic, you'd have 22nd, 23rd, and who knows how many other people involved because they wrote guides, did theorycrafting, made videos, etc. etc. that you use to get your kills.

It's not the same.

Even the best-made WAs are not even close in comparison to an actual RL.

[Xravis]

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.

What does it matter though it doesn't affect you at all? Max would also just go back to tanking or healing and lead from there and do just as good, your under valuing how much a good raid lead does.