
Originally Posted by
exochaft
That's true to a point, but it also comes down to Blizz's ultimate decision around ICC to tune/balance raids around the existence of combat addons. If Blizz decided to disable combat addons in raids, the raids would look a helluva lot different than they do now... or at the very least they'd wouldn't be tuned nearly as tight as they are now. They've even admitted many times in blue posts that the addon decision basically started an arms race, but I always found it odd that they'd almost play victim when they were holding all the cards. You can't stop players from wanting to optimize, but Blizz could put their foot down on certain issues so things don't get out of hand.
I remember Blizz did disable the AVR addon back in ICC (the one that projected textures on the ground to show where mechanics would be) because it would make mechanics too easy. While they've disabled other functions over time from being public since, they've fundamentally missed the point that quite often the addons being disabled were felt as necessary because the mechanics/content were being overtuned because they were allowed in the first place; furthermore, designed content around the existence of addons makes it a self-fulfilling prophecy. Also doesn't help that Blizz was pretty bad at showing/signaling mechanics, which necessitated a bossmod addon for many. Weakauras (formerly Powerauras) was probably the biggest offender of them all, to where they have a pseudo-version of it as part of the WoW UI now. It's no secret that Blizz also used these addons as excuses to not fix things because they held the mentality that "why fix broken stuff when players will make addons to do it for us?"... again they made a statement akin to this back in BfA.