Hello, I don’t like using appeals to authority type arguments to try and justify my point but I don’t think an introduction would hurt to try and describe where I’m coming from with my points and the type of content I’m referring to when i talk about issues. I’m currently a healer in where we achieved US 12 last tier and when I’m talking about issues I’m mostly referring to things that effect progression mythic raiding. I understand that this is an extremely small portion of the player base, but I firmly believe that these issues either effect more people than just mythic raiders, or have easy to implement solutions (that currently exist in addons) that would just be options and not effect the base product that people use already. The following is my understanding of how the current systems within the game function after playing the game whilst turning off all of my raid frame addons and examining the changes currently on alpha.
The dispelable debuff options that are currently on live and the option presented earlier in the week (posted by blizzard on 10/23) are subpar at best and don’t provide enough customization for players. The only options are a small border than can be difficult to see (especially with how many random buffs/debuff display on base ui) or a solid brick of color that effects the entire frame. There are middle ground offered by addons currently, my personal preference being to only color the health bar of the person’s frame and use color’s that aren’t so oppressive but there are other options currently supplied by addons that people like that are not offered.
Various buffs/debuffs from the class you’re playing AND the other people in your raid display on frames and don’t add to any decision making and should be able to be removed via a spell id blacklist (hunter pet debuffs on hunters, dh/lock have debuffs on themselves, healers have numerous hots/buffs they apply to people that aren’t impactful such as Light of the Martyr debuff, and Eternal Flame). The same goes for being able to add things via a whitelist if they’re missing. This one is fairly unarguable in my opinion. For the duration of the games life players have been able to customize what buffs/debuffs display incase something doesn’t make sense.
Certain debuffs caused by the raid are not impactful to decision making and should also be able to be black listed. Things like raid wide effects that only happen on pull normally have a debuff that I’d argue is useless and just takes up space, and pushback effects often have a debuff that isn’t needed to be displayed because you know your character is being pushed. Other more person to person cases such as Nexus King phase 1 debuffs and Dimensius devour are things that I personally have turned off currently that I wouldn’t be able to in Midnight as of right now.
Buffs/Debuffs currently have a limited number of “boxes” they can be slotted into. Blizzard is offering a staggeringly low 3 options to move buffs/debuffs around and are chosen by them. I see no reason players should be limited by what Blizzard thinks is serviceable in this regard. This also leads into an issue where sizing/changing can be done by addons by effecting the group as a whole to my understanding, but only have so few “boxes” means you cant change individual spells effectively and thus you need to design your ui in a way that treats all spells the same, when some spells are more important than others. A big thing about this Blizzard doesn’t seem to like is things like unit frame glows on debuffs. While I don’t think Blizzard will back down on this point I don’t think that making mechanics easier to see when they’re on players makes the game so much easier that it limits their ability to design healers/ fights.
Absorbs/Heal absorb effects don’t display almost at all. It’s just a sliver glove on the right of the frame and its impossible to tell how much of an absorb/over heal is left.
As much as I would like Blizzard to somehow allow unit frame addons to have more access while still achieving their overarching goals, whether or not I completely agree or not, I don’t think this is something likely to happen before the next expansion. I think reasonable solutions to most of these issues is just borrowing from what addons have been doing the whole time.
Players should be able to fully customize the way buffs/debuffs AND what buffs/debuffs are displayed. These are just quality of life changes to help parse through the incredible amount of information that exists in the game.
Buff/debuff filters are 100% necessary to allow players to decide what is shown incase something doesn’t make sense.
Absorb/heal absorbs need to have an effect that clearly displays how big they are, such as having a gradient effect over the players health bar on the frame.
I think there needs to be more options to display dispel able effects other than covering the entire frame or something so incredibly different to see.
Adding the option to individually move/effect buffs your player applies to people is something that has existed and needs to continue to exist for healer players going forward, there needs to be the option to create/move “groups” of buffs that people apply as well as resizing them if needed. I don’t think with the information addons have currently on alpha, they will be able to service this correctly.
If your belief is that these changes will bring the skill gap between the top end and the more casual side closer together and “level the playing field” these changes will only make it more difficult for more casual players to see what’s going on as useless information is displayed, and important information is not made clear enough, whilst the very top guilds in the world will just continue spending increasing amount of time outside of the game coordinating and designing strategies to deal with difficult encounters and find new ways to succeed.
All in all, I just want the game to be fun to play going forwards. I appreciate that Blizzard is trying to address an issue they see with the game that hamstrings their ability to design fights but I think they’re being too heavy handed in their approach to ui addons. I don’t think any solution I listed impacts a players ability to just load up the game and play, which I believe to be their goal, but it does give more season players the ability to maintain information they’ve been able to get from the game for years and play at a high level.
Lastly, I don’t think alienating the top end of the player base is good for the game. For decades now, players have been entrusted with the ability to make decisions for themselves on what they want to see on their screen to best handle encounters. This is a pillar of what makes WoW raiding great, and different from every other market. Certain weak auras certainly have gotten too far into the realm of solving mechanics for players and that certainly has created an unhealthy relationship between encounter designers and players, but I believe this has gone extremely too far into hampering the ability of players to parse through information and best tackle an encounter. But, the solutions to the issues above don’t require players to go look for 3rd party sources to augment their game to better see encounters. All of these things can, and should be done by blizzard if they are to completely strip away access to external solutions, and can be done in a way that is concise and easy to understand for intermediate to advanced players should they so want to, and would remain as only options to what blizzard currently has in place.