Exactly as it says above. Recent interviews discuss the “arms race against addons in raids.” Let’s put together some mechanics that shouldn’t need addons but are still fun to raid against. Here’s one I’ve come up with.
LFR - the most important mechanic(s) exist to demonstrate the boss abilities, but there are clear markers/an NPC calling out what to do. Example, as the boss gets ready to explode/raid wipe, Brann yells “Get the shield up!” any two players can pull the lever on the left and the right to create an energy shield that deflects most of the damage (leaving healing something to do). The longer you wait, the more damage goes out.
Normal - NPC still calls stuff out, but there is a new mechanic that singe’s the targets’ hands so they can only do it once every 3 minutes (every other time).
Heroic - NPC no longer calls it out.
Mythic - The shield takes damage, so you have to decide how long to keep the shield up and how much damage you can leave to healers so it’s still there to prevent full wipe.
Mechanics that do not need addons will need to be visually consistent across every fight. For example a green circle should always in every case be a soak. A player marked by a bomb should always in every case be obviously marked as such.
I fully agree with NPC or other in game prompts about timing a shield correctly.
Everything that needs interrupting or dispelling should also be cued with prompts or dialogue.
“But that won’t be visually thematic, interesting, or unique!”
We tried that for years and we’re more dependent than ever on addons. It’s time for a new approach.
I think they can be distinct between raids, so long as it’s made clear early on what the current visual being used is. This time, it’s a mushroom on your head. Next time, it’s an actual item you pick up and carry, then drop. And so on.
WoW does actually have a consistent visual language for mechanics, it just doesn’t use colour.
Filled circle / other shape, move out
Unfilled circle on you, spread
Circle on ground with plume, soak. Plume shrinks when being soaked
Circle aroud you with plume, stack and soak damage
Arrow / line. Damage goes from initial location to arrow / lines destination.
As for “Mechanics that dont require weakauras” the answer is anything that doesn’t expect players to communicate with eachother to solve, and anything that expects communication but gives ample time for said players to communicate.
Example, Ovinax eggs don’t require a weakaura, they require communication. However they require more communication than can realistically be done in a timeframe of 6 (Now 8) seconds, and as such people turn to automation. Had the mechanic given players 12 seconds, they could likely have worked things out themselves.
Kyveza portals were ranged only and ranged had pre assigned spots to just anchor to at the start of each phase. The charges afterwards were just pre assigned spots based on which charge you got.
Theres almost no functional similarity to Ovinax eggs.
The first portals in Kyveza are ranged only so you can preplan that. You can’t preplan Mythic Ovi’nax because the raid is getting 8 randomly selected to double on eggs accurately in 6 seconds for 7 times. This is 100% impossible without WA.
So… This wasn’t the topic at all. Any of you want to suggest an encounter that can go without W/A or just want to go back and forth about existing encounters? Maybe try your own/another thread?
Kyveza is one of the best fights we’ve had in recent years and doesn’t “Require” addons at all. The point is automating aspects of a mechanic will always make it easier, but very rarely will anything in the fight require an addon to execute.
The only time it does is when a mechanic requires players to communicate information and doesn’t give them the time to communicate it, such as Ovinax.
They could have color coded the eggs and made 4 matching debuffs. The net result would have been the same mechanic without any need for weakauras.
What I really want to know is just how they did it without weakauras during their testing. My suspicion is that they never completed the fight in it’s finished form and worked on some version that only tested their ability to organize for that mechanic while the others were turned off. They probably even found it could be done in a vacuum in 6 seconds and added 2 seconds out of generosity. I have serious concerns with the suitability of their testing. Feels like a lot mechanics get tested out of context.
I think you would get better feedback if you gave people a prompt on which to base their designs. Something as simple as protecting a picnic from a magical bear with a tie. Maybe add some parameters like single target fight with 2 phases with a transition in between.
The net result is nothing close to the same mechanic. The whole point of the mechanic was to make people communicate with eachother, removing the need to communicate turns it into a colour matching exercise. It’s more like Fatescribe soaks at that point.
I don’t think it’s good to just have no mechanics that expect players to communicate purely because the players will make weakauras for them. I’d much rather bliz put their foot down and use the tools they have available to stop players offloading them to add-ons when they come up, but also allot appropriate amounts of time / cognitive load to the mechanics themselves.
I meant it would result in the same behavior created by the weakaura, which seems like the obvious solution. That’s why I went on a tangent about them not trying to find solutions to their own problems, meaning they overlook times we will obvious resort to weakauras to solve the problem.
We’re both in agreement that the time allowed to respond was insufficient, which was why I questioned their testing process. Regardless, it sounds like they have big plans for addons so perhaps we’ll see a positive shift in boss mechanics.
I think the community’s vehement dislike of private auras likely put them in an awkward position. On paper private auras were a great idea, but the initial implementation / first impression was SO BAD it basically sullied them in the mind of every raider forever from that point forward.
I expect the ovinax mechanic on mythic was redesigned to challenge players even with weakauras, due to the fact players effectively revolted against the mechanic’s initial design pre testing / tuning purely because it was a private aura.
That does make sense. I think it all comes back to them trying to design a mechanic that will challenge the best players in the world yet still make it possible for less skilled players to eventually kill. The time it would take my team to spread appropriately is probably twice as much as the RFW teams need, which feels like a tough thing to design for. Hence why I think designing for them puts the remaining 99% in a rough spot.
I think while that’s obviously true, it might be less true than one might expect were the mechanic be humanely lenient in the first place. Oftentimes the difference is how much of one’s cognitive budget can be afforded alongside what else is happening. Ovinax’s original tuning was a pretty tough dps check on top of the cognitive load of sorting out positions in a 6 second time window. Without that dps check there’s already a lot more brain to go around.
If, for example, the ovinax egg mechanic was exactly the same except the timer was 12 seconds and it was private so players HAD to work it out themselves. Do you think that would have been problematic?
I think that’s fine, you’d also have less dps to be doing in the meantime too. Bottom line I’d much prefer 12 seconds no weakauar to 6 or 8 seconds with. Even if it’s harder to do for me personally because it’s my responsibility to communicate.
I agree. I think Sikran was a decent example of that. We used the square positioning to drop clones, and while there wasn’t a ton of time to do so, there was enough time to allow us to manage it without help.
