Are mistake-announcing addons bad?

I run M+ all the time, and have an addon called Elitism Helper. Every time someone takes optional damage more than 20% of their HP, it says in party chat:

“PlayerX got hit by [Ability] for 89.3k (39.4%)”

I have this for two reasons:

  • If someone dies, I want the blame to go to the correct place. I don’t want to take blame for you dying if you stood in fire.
  • Being aware of our mistakes helps us improve.

The vast majority of my groups (90%+) never mention the addon. A few groups notice the summary at the end, and are proud or casually disappointed with their performance.

In two groups, just the fact that the addon is announcing their mistakes, they get very upset and aggressive. These groups have fallen apart.

On one hand, my attitude is “If you’re upset something is announcing your mistakes, stop making mistakes.” I’m not giving people crap for their mistakes. It just passively announces.

On the other hand, just the fact that I have this addon is negatively affecting some of my groups.

What does the community think?

Many players, including myself, play so we can see chat bubbles over the character’s heads. Its valuable when you raid or run M+ and need to see DBM alerts or similar status alerts.

That addon’s text is blocking the view of what is happening in battle. It makes things worse. Anything visual like that that is not information that helps a player make an immediate combat decision of what to do next is a visual distraction that reduces effectiveness.

Change the text to output to the emote channel. Emote’s don’t pop up over character’s heads, but you can still see them in the chat screen. You still get what you want without creating a visual problem in combat.

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I think this’ll reach more of the community in General, and that there’s more to the story if you’re questioning the use of popular addons after problems in only two groups (how many groups have you run, and all 4 people both times?)

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My personal take is that while I don’t mind that sort of thing (provided it’s restrained to the instance chat channel) in a group of people that I’m familiar with. My raid leader has an addon that announces who died to what mechanic, regardless of whether the mechanic was avoidable or not.

However when I’m running in pugs, an addon announcing that I just took X amount of damage every time it happens, that would come across as rude, elitist, and/or condescending.

I raid on a Heroic/Mythic level, and I know I’m not a terrible player, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t make mistakes for a variety of reasons. Maybe I don’t notice a mechanic or don’t react quickly enough. Maybe I got trapped by bad positioning. Maybe I just failed hard. I don’t need some random stranger (or their addon) in a group telling me that I did that. It’s irritating. It feels like I’m being judged, and that kills any enjoyment I might get out of the game. It makes me feel like I am a terrible player, and frankly, it makes me more likely to commit more errors as the instance progresses rather than fewer.

The fact is, simply by having that addon, you are giving people crap for their mistakes. You just have the addon doing the dirty work for you. You can’t tell people to just “stop making mistakes” either. Reality doesn’t work that way. People will always make mistakes. Some people will make more mistakes than others. Because there are actual people (presumably) playing each character, perfection is entirely impossible.

That’s just my take on it though.

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Adding that make any sort of group wide announcements tthat are not specifically related to fight mechanics get old real fast.

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This hardly seems like a “new player help” topic, more for GD as others have said…

I think announcing other peoples mistakes in chat (whether its automated or done by hand) is going to ruffle a lot of feathers… Some people like having the info, other’s don’t.

My advice - don’t let it post to chat automatically. If someone gives you crap, post it then. I keep a Details window up when I heal with “Damage Taken” which lets me see this info.

Nothing wrong with having the data to back yourself up if something goes wrong - to me though its a bit on the negative side to force it down peoples throats.

I agree with Keres. There’s a right way to explain what wiped the group and a wrong way. Having an add-on auto-explain the failure is the wrong way for the majority of players. Whether you like it or not, you’re passing judgment on other players using such. While we are all to some extent judged by our peers, doing so with such a blatant and blunt method is just going to make people not want to play with you.

If you wipe, explain, link relevant data, and work through the issue. Don’t just have an add-on passive aggressively blare out the mistake.

Sorry, but yes, you are. Running an add on that announces mistakes isn’t really any different from typing those announcements in yourself.

Different people learn in different ways. If that’s the way you learn, set the add on to announce your own mistakes only.

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Just to point out, I posted this in General and it was moved here. I don’t agree with the move.

Generally the ppl I have seen in pugs (only seen this in pugs, not ppl I know) that are upset about a healer running eh (and a lot of tanks do too) are the ones who CONTINUALLY stand in sanguine etc…I make mistakes, it announces those too–doesn’t upset me. Why should I have to link, explain, etc. what happened ? Because you don’t know? Then why don’t you have Details with a damage taken window up? Bleh…ppl will whine about anything and too frequently blame heals. That becomes hard to do if EH has announced you got hit for 90 then 20% back to back by stupid.

lol sorry, just saw date…mah bad