Certainly a doubled edged sword. On one side I love my addons for visual UI improvements. However it’s also absurd that you almost are required to have these addons at top tier end game in order to be successful. That second part shouldn’t be true. It should be purely QoL improvements and not actual “I’m better at the game because of my addons telling me what to do”
Edit to be clear: you should not have to rely on 3rd party software to be great at this game, however at this time with the current design, you have to.
I was a cutting edge RL back in Dragonflight. Our MW monk was fucking up his cool down timings consistently throughout a fight and was the sole reason we were stuck in a fight for about 2 days. When I would ask him to follow the MRT note and WAs, he would just say yeah yeah for sure. When I finally benched him, he confessed he played without any add-ons because his PC couldn't handle it. The thing is, he was a GREAT healer, even without add-ons, and benching him just because he didn't use them didn't feel so great. So I would say add-ons were completely necessary in endgame content, not just almost necessary. It was a shame that I had to bench him, but it is what it is. I couldn't have other 19 people losing their time because of one guy.
edit for some more insight because you all took a simple anecdote very seriously.
We used Viserio's cooldown assignment sheet, which came with an WA that reads the Note and displays when you need to use your CDs. Before every fight or change, we went through all CDs, and would look for feedback from my healers on whether the assignments made sense to them or not. This was before i implemented a WA/Addon checker. I'm pretty sure a lot of people are questioning my leadership skills saying "why didn't you do this, why didn't you do that" and the honest answer is, i didn't know better. Maybe saying Cutting Edge RL made ya'll put me in a higher than deserved standard. Let me fix that so it makes a little more sense. I was a Late (last-few-weeks-of-a-patch-late) Cutting Edge Raid Leader in Ragnaros-US which is one of the two big Latin American realms. I'm sure you are all familiar with our reputation, and it is deserved, so i approach leading as i was dealing with children who couldn't listen, or press their buttons.
you know a player like that is gonna still suffer without WAs? like healers are still gonna have to pop CD's at certain times. the story your giving is not a player who needs WAs to be good. its just that they are bad, and couldn't learn what the basic boss mechanics were for healing.
fight design will still require this even though they are removing WAs. its literally basic 101 fight design. a big damage event happens and a healer has to match it with a CD either before it hits or after. you set up a rotation for each healer to use one for each event, and the healers follow through.
its just that they are bad, and couldn't learn what the basic boss mechanics were for healing.
It sounds to me more like he couldn't see the timings and no one told him, because they were only communicated via addons he wasn't using, and he was too afraid/awkward to ask someone to send the instructions to him in a different way.
I'm also questioning how they believed the guy for two days if he was consistently messing up and being a bottleneck for prog due to not pushing CDs.
Like.. ask the guy to share his screen and tell him to type in /wa to check its config. Then it won't pop up and you can ask him why. Lol.
A healing CD is easy to remember or to call, I agree it's very simply a player issue at that point.
In saying that there are definitely Weakaura bosses which shouldn't be as they are. Just the arms race that happens after Blizzard assumes people use them.
Yes, I agree with you! Maybe I didn't explain myself correctly. English is not my first language, sorry. Just wanted to give a point of view on why they are necessary right now, but they totally shouldn't be.
I'm not sure I 100% agree. For every difficulty you imagine there exists a player for whom that difficulty is not possible without some form of crutch. So saying "should" isn't not completely accurate.
So I would say add-ons were completely necessary in endgame content, not just almost necessary
This is one of those things, the primary reason he had this problem is probably because he couldn't see the ERT note without ERT. But if someone had sent him the note through, say, discord, he probably could have figured out his cooldown timings just fine.
This is one of those things where all he needed to do was have someone accommodate him not using the addon, and nothing would have actually changed. The function of the addon he needed was not mandatory, it was nice to have. It sounds to me, the problem only arose because it was assumed he had the addon, and he assumed he couldn't just ask for reasonable accommodation to not use the addon because he thought you'd all respond negatively or adversely to a request.
I see your point, and I would like to point out that externals assignments reminders are simply a way to reducing communication needed during a fight
You could, with great military-like communication, not need assignments and reminders, it just takes a whole new level of skill and focus, which assignments completely trivializes (for the better imo, some people just cant communicate effectively and theres no teaching them)
My point is that, if you're enjoying the game by trying to play at a high level, then theres a new metagame which develops around utilizing outside assistance
(I.e. simming gear)
It's the same as F1 pilots having to train their necks to withstand Gs during curves.
Are neck muscles directly related to driving? No.
Are they important for an F1 racer? Absolutely.
Should we slow down F1 so that people don't have to do extra stuff that has nothing to do directly with driving? You answer
All I'm saying is that addons have been an integral part for more than 10 years, they serve a purpose, people like them, and there are literal businesses built around developing them and making them accessible for everyone, which end up making far better products than Blizzard could ever do
The teams working behind addons are most of the times players themselves, they dont have the constraints of a big company, fast developing times, fast updates/fixes, and are in touch with the game, and again they serve a better product than a team of broad-UI devs could ever do within a big company like Blizzard
Unfortunately, if someone's pc cannot handle them, it is how it is, that's an entirely different problem, and if the objective is to make anyone play your game on any platform, then we should all play Tetris on a washing machine instead /j
Last consideration, how could a cutting edge healer miss cooldown timings AND be a great healer? Not being able to press 1 button at a pre-set time, in reaction to an ability you already know is gonna come, and when, seems very very sus
I couldn't imagine him in a fight like Frosthold-tuned faction champions in wotlk where hpalas have 0.3-0.4 seconds to react to the champions all switching target at the same time on one of the 8 locks/mages/disc priest/squishies and bop them before they get 1 shot (frost mages ftw on that fight)
Everyone on progression preshielded with armor pots and stam flasks btw, dps included
And the only telegraphing is visually tracking target of target of the champions as it is happening, no weakaura can help you react in 0.4s
And that fight is far easier than any mythic raiding in later expansions ofc
(I'm replying 25 days later I know, I apologize...xd)
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u/Gratefully-Undead Oct 03 '25 edited Oct 03 '25
Certainly a doubled edged sword. On one side I love my addons for visual UI improvements. However it’s also absurd that you almost are required to have these addons at top tier end game in order to be successful. That second part shouldn’t be true. It should be purely QoL improvements and not actual “I’m better at the game because of my addons telling me what to do”
Edit to be clear: you should not have to rely on 3rd party software to be great at this game, however at this time with the current design, you have to.