so instead of trying to push for blizzard to design the game in a better way to facilitate players being able to play the game without addons you would rather just quit? you do you but this sounds like a loser mentality to me.
Didn’t mean to insult you somehow, wasn’t aware there was a thread about add ons
I do enjoy the addons, but I also do agree that the vast majority of the player base has become too reliant on the addons, sort of like technology. Letting the addons do the thinking for us, but as I get older I realize my gaming skills have fallen off from what they used to be.
So I do enjoy the addons that help me out as i’m an old man now.
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Be the change you want to see, no addon mythic guild.
When did this ever happen in WoW? You must be thinking about some other game. DBM has been around since Vanilla, Details was predated by Recount and predated by SW Stats - also around since Vanilla. We also had a rare scanner since Wrath at least (NPCscan). Sadly, Blizzard broke it
Yes. Yes they do. Doesn’t matter. You don’t need most addons. I rarely ever pay attention to Bigwigs, Really, the most useful feature for them are the timers so I know when to hold my CDs. After a few runs at the same boss, even those are unnecessary most of the time. One exception to this is GTFO. That is an absolute requirement, especially if you play a class that has its own ground effects. I’m okay with this.
WoW was built on addons. I’ve actually gone to other games, realized there was no way to measure my performance, and quit for that very reason. Addon availability is one of my favorite features of the game.
I didn’t know they were in vanilla, not doubting you I probably just didn’t know. I think the only outside resource I knew of was thottbot. But yes, vanilla and bc are what comes to mind. Maybe wotlk I had recount but I honestly can’t remember. Oh no I had the one you can use the dressing room for rep rewards and raids to see what dropped
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Boss mods/Weak Auras/GTFO won’t go away. So you may as well use them to be on an even field.
Default UI stuff is getting better, but still not good enough. Especially if you do any healing IMO. On Blizz frames the icons that appears on them for, as an example, you have a HoT on someone, it is soo damn tiny. Just not very practical yet.
If all I did was DPS, then I could simply use the default UI setups comfortably. Even as a tank, I would be highly annoyed with Blizz Default Setups/UI elements.
I am sure someone will say Default frames are fine, but again, their opinion, not mine.
TL;DR Addons enhance wow in many ways, not ruined it. Technically one does not HAVE TO run addons, but doing so is a disadvantage IMO.
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it was a stupid question. Bait as well.
I try to respond to those as little as possible
If blizz would put some effort into their interface, addons wouldn’t be necessary.
Without weakauras I have no idea how many charges of arcane missiles I have, when they expire, when I’ve got a free orb proc, or when I’ve got aoe missiles loaded. All of those should be communicated by the default interface.
It is about as good as it should have been 15 years ago.
I tried to get rid of ElvUI last week. I hate how bloated it is. I didn’t have any luck with the stock frames or even TukUI. I might try a few other addons this weekend. Kind of wish I have never downloaded ElvUI since it’s difficult to replace once yu start using it.
Yes, I use ElvUI also. It is very heavy, but it works very well also. I have tried in the past to replace it, so far I have failed. 
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At the lower end they’re probably more of a crutch for lesser skilled players.
At the higher end they’re a tool for highly skilled players that already know most of their class and the encounters inside and out.
I’ve said this before, but what I get annoyed with is the “get gud” people who cry about classes being “easy”, but then they use addons to make the game easy.
It seems to me to be an attempt to gate-keep others all so they can feel “gud”.
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How was that bait? You’re on a forum, presumably to communicate or socialize with others. I was just asking your opinion on the matter, nothing malicious.
First of all, this makes you sound like you’re the one with the ego.
Addons exist to solve problems.
Lets take weak auras. The most common use of weak auras is rotational UI.
The Blizzard default UI doesn’t do basic things that allow people to play their class properly.
Example 1 - BM hunter.
Classically an easy spec, right, maybe only slightly more complex than Ret or Frost mage. This specs entire damage performance is reliant on maintaining 3 stacks of Frenzy on your pet at all times. Except the game doesn’t give you any practical way to keep tabs on this in the default UI. The intended method is that Frenzy runs out when your last dot of Barbed shot expires, but you might have Barbed shot on multiple targets in an AOE situation or the Frenzy running from a target that had barbed shot that died 5 seconds ago.
Example 2 - Feral druid
Classically a more complex spec, because the old farts who post on the forums vehemently resist any modernization and are known to still play on 56k modems. This specs entire performance relies on decades old “bleed snapshotting”, where a bleed empowered by stealth and/or tiger’s fury and/or Blood Talons retains it value for the entire duration regardless of whether buffs fall off. But the base game gives you no indication that the bleeds you already have out are empowered by any combination of these already, which means a Feral player has no way of telling at a glance whether or not they’re going to overwrite an empowered bleed.
Weak auras are basically required to make these specs playable until Blizzard fixes this UX problem.
Example 3 - Every class in the game
Nearly every class in the game has at least one spec whose rotation changes during a cooldown window. Icy Veins, Combustion, Nether Portal, Incarnation, True Shot, Kingsbane, Meta, Breath, Wings, etc.
For some of these classes, the fact that you are inside your cooldown is very obvious. Meta for example makes you become a huge demon and changes the icons on your bars to indicate you’re inside the window. For others, there’s virtually no indication, like Kingsbane putting a single debuff on the boss buried among the dozens of others, or that indicator might be very difficult to see in your own buff bar, like True Shot or Icey Veins or Combustion duration being buried behind dozens of raid buffs and trinket procs. For others, you may not even have an obvious buff/debuff to track (Nether Portal, not sure if this has changed, but it used to be you’d have to have visual on the portal to know it was still up).
For the majority of classes, there is at least some major UX failure in the base game caused by the way important buffs and debuffs are not separated or prioritized over generic raid buffs and trinket pros.
Should weak auras be solving boss fights for us? No.
Should we expect a better UI for tracking tank swap mechanics and core class rotations? Absolutely yes.
Are boss timers like bigwigs really needed? Yes, until Blizzard stops putting dark purple swirlies on a dark purple floor or fire swirlies on a flame colored floor and suggesting that’s an adequate telegraph.
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Honestly… for the most part I think it has, but that’s for me personally.
I am against any Add-on that tells you how to play the game. GTFO, BigWigs/DBM etc… as well as Weak Auras which can easily be customized to do so.
I’m against them for three reasons
- It breeds another level of gate keeping, players forcing other players to have an addon, to me, is stupid. No one should be required to have an addon if they do not want to have one.
- It, IMO, stops people from really learning how the game works if they have an addon that tells them how to fight the boss, what button to press next in their rotation etc… it just makes them reliant on the game telling them 100% what to do. Context clues and ability telegraphs should be IN game, and that would be on the Devs to put in there.
- Worst of all, I think it makes encounters less fun. When the encounter is solved by “Use this addon” that’s not a good, or viable, solution IMO.
Inversely, I have nothing against Addons to enhance simple things or change the basic UI. Different Fonts or color changes, replacing the Mini-map with a compass, etc… but when it changes how the game is played mechanically… I rail against it. No encounter, no part of the game, should “require” an addon and I honestly wish they would ban them.
It also calls to question “Is the game too complicated that players feel addons are required to play it?” The simple answer is I don’t think it is most of the time, but because we have addons people don’t feel the need to actually learn and practice.
I know people won’t like me using FFXIV but they ban addons for many reasons, and it’s forced it’s players to learn the game. I raided for years in WoW, with the add-ons, I couldn’t tell ya what half the bosses actually do. But I can certainly tell you beat for beat what a boss in a Savage raid is going to do, in what order. 14 forces you to learn the fight and I love it for that.
EDIT: An extra note on my thoughts here, A big part of the problem lies in the Devs not giving the players enough info so they also feel that Addons are needed to get through it. people wouldn’t feel the need for Add-ons if there was better Feedback from the game itself on boss abilities, rotational requirements, etc… But, because there ARE addons, it may not be a thing Devs care to do because an Addon will solve it, which if true, I think is bad for the game’s health. I should have clarified that.
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This reminded me how the raids in FFXIV were so much less complicated. I still hated the solo ones though, because I was terrible at them.
The base raids are fairly simple, Savage raids are more complicated (Still doable of course, just much more to remember and very little room for a single mistake)
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Thank you for your in depth explanations. I can also see how it would come off as me having the ego. I can assure you that’s not the case. It comes from a lot of what I read on the forums it’s reflective value of the player base. Admittedly, that can’t be health nor accurate to the majority of the players. I can’t deny that I do see that a lot though
It’s a complex issue with a “genie out of the bottle” problem that prevents them from being removed from the game at this stage. This is unlike FFXIV, which banned add-ons from the outset and will be a main source of comparison.
But let’s just list off the main issues:
- IN THEORY, add-ons should not be necessary. This is an unwritten rule of game design, but Blizz designs encounters which make it either extremely difficult or awkward without them. The tight performance/output requirements encourages add-ons as well, as aids for gameplay are effectively required. FFXIV’s encounters are designed to not require any outside information, as well as very little randomness so that players can learn to do any fight by just practicing and learning to read it.
- IN THEORY, add-ons should be harmless. Quality-of-life features via add-ons the devs couldn’t foresee don’t hurt the game… usually; and it’s not uncommon for these to become baseline features in the game later. Unfortunately, players rarely keep it to “just QoL features” because of things like performance mattering to players.
- Even if banned, players WILL still use them. This is a fact of life, and FFXIV is proof of it; though banning them does push them “underground” and usually keeps their impacts to most players at a minimum.
The big issue with WoW is that “climbing the ladder”, and therefore performance and doing stuff correctly, is an intrinsic part of the motivation loop for players in the game.
This is why “performance enhancing” add-ons (especially encounter & rotation guides like DBM and WeakAuras) are so pervasive - and invasive - to WoW’s experience.
These should NOT be considered necessary by the community… but they definitely are. Some may claim they aren’t, but there’s always that caveat about the player not doing “as good” as those who do use them. Sure, you could eventually get 100 miles down the road by walking… but everyone else is driving a car.
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