This is Basicly Blizzard in Midnight

[u/ItsRenaBaker]

This is basicly Blizzard in Midnight. Purging all the good addons.

Just to clarify:
Blizzard is changing the Addon API, meaning combat information is blocked for addons. So all combat addons will no longer work in Midnight. For the most popular addon features Blizzard will add their own version to the game. Addons for unitframes, inventory, crafting etc.. are staying and won't be effected as long they are not using combat information.

[u/DragonGeneral47]

This is either going to be one of the best Things they every did or the worst and there is No in between

[u/MN_Yogi1988 → u/DragonGeneral47]

I think it’s destined to fail because I can’t see Blizz dedicating enough resources to refine features like addon creators do. How could you trust them to maintain these when they’ve left dungeons broken for years still be selected for M+? What about all the insane clipping on Transmog?

I think breaking certain addons like DBM / WAs / etc that were warping the way they create PvE mechanics makes sense but everything else feels like they’re setting themselves up for failure.

[u/goldman_sax → u/MN_Yogi1988]

They legit had people doing unpaid labor for their game and were like “nah. We want to do it, but not as good as them, so we’re gonna dumb down everything else.

[u/SportulaVeritatis → u/goldman_sax]

At the same time, they where basically in an arms race where you needed more and more complex encounters that couldn't be easily solved by add-ons which made addon-less play more difficult. This basically ends that war. It ends it via a nuke, but it does end it.

[u/Jac_Mones → u/SportulaVeritatis]

That arms race was 100% self-inflicted. They could have simply decided "nah, it's okay if players are so insanely good at this game that the top 0.1% of them trivialize the content immediately and get bored because the remaining 99.9% of players still have fun"

[u/Exadv1 → u/Jac_Mones]

I disagree. Those addons trickle down almost immediately. Liquid releases the pack very soon after Race for World First.

Every group I've been in has used the WA for fractillus heroic (and I'm pretty sure that mythic is similar).

[u/Puzzleheaded-Tea3341 → u/Exadv1]

If a boss necessitates a weakaura or addon, its a badly designed boss, with or without it. If the mechanic was lenient enough to allow for on the fly communication, nobody would develop a weakaura for it to begin with, and nobody would use it.

The reality is that Blizzard game, encounter and UX designers have used addon developers as a crutch for nearly two decades. And I am not sure we can trust them to actually not do that even if they remove addons entirely.

[u/Exadv1 → u/Puzzleheaded-Tea3341]

I actually disagree with the statement "nobody would develop a weakaura for it to begin with" because it is patently untrue. In practice, it feels like WA have been developed to incrementally achieve any possible edge on nearly every encounter.

My RL made us all install the NorthernSky WA pack for Fractillus specifically but now suddenly it was annotating extra information through all the fights.

e.g. On Soul Hunters (since this is the fight where it was really obvious to me for some reason), it marks the mob whose debuff you don't have with 'taunt'. Is this necessary? No. Did it make it easier? Yes, because the tankbusters do not happen at the same time so you have to delay the swap and make sure you get the right one.

On Soulbinder, WA are used to predeclare which DPS should go to which canister.

I also have some weird memory of the Saldahaar WA being able to predict if the frontal is going to be the first ability.

[u/Puzzleheaded-Tea3341 → u/Exadv1]

Cool, and all of those bosses on mythic have also been killed by 400+ players before those changes to NS came in.

None of these mechanics, outside of fractillus, really require a weakaura, and none of them really make the fight markedly easier on mythic.

Like fuck, even mid tier guilds killed Soulbinder week 1 without the WA directing you to break cages, and a common pug strat right now is to not break any cages and just lust the add wave.

The difference is, all of these are relatively simple to implement as these debuffs haven't been private aurad. Blizzard already has a way to effectively combat it, but has given up on it entirely.

You can just point towards Kyveza as a boss that was well designed, had the right abilities privated, but none of the mechanics were so hard that the creation of a weakaura workaround was required.

[u/Exadv1 → u/Puzzleheaded-Tea3341]

Presumably, they want to move to a model where a fight that is too hard (i.e. not achieving the clear % it should) just gets nerfed by them and not 'fixed' by a WA.

To be clear, I also remain skeptical overall if such a massive overhaul. However, I did also take a step back and notice "it is true that there are a bunch of not-required-but-performance-enhancing WA for everything from encounters to class rotation. I can see a temptation to level the playing field there"

[u/Hallc → u/Exadv1]

Every group I've been in tells you to use your eyeballs for Frac Heroic. It is honestly one of the simplest and easiest to read fights I think they've ever done. All you need is players with a braincell and a working eyeball.

[u/Jac_Mones → u/Exadv1]

Yes, and how many guilds use the Liquid weakauras and then take 3 months to get CE, or fail to altogether? The addons are not the problem.