The reason for private auras is to make it impossible to automate mechanics through addons. The automation is done because mechanics are obscure. If private auras want to succeed the mechanics need to not be obscure. If mechanics are not obscure we don’t need to automate them. If we don’t need to automate them they don’t have to be private auras.
In an ideal scenario you don’t need addons to solve the mechanics, this is 100% true, but it does prevent you from properly tracking a debuff. Example: You get a circle that will expire after 10s and does something. This means you have 10s with other players to find a position and drop it, great! This is a good implementation.
But here it comes: you can’t show the debuff on your screen because it’s a private aura. You now have to install a Weak Aura pack to change the anchor of these weak auras so they become visible. This means that there’s no way for weak aura packs to integrate the icon with the rest either, so now you have an awkward icon in the middle of the screen that you can’t properly customize, and can be hard to spot as well due to its size/color being in the middle of rainbow explosions of effects on the target you’re looking at. You can’t add a custom sound either, so you’re extremely limited in what you can do and it just makes your UI even more chaotic.
Private auras are 100% useless and make it more complicated to track useful information while not solving the underlying problem. The underlying problem is obscure mechanics and that’s only solved by making the mechanic to not be obscure.
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Aren’t private auras only ‘hidden’ to addons? I don’t think they’re actually invisible to players. That just depends on the mechanic itself, whether it’s private or not has no effect on the mechanic/debuff’s in-game visuals.
i think a lot of the mechanics are hidden by the mechanics. I honestly don’t know how melee does it. Even with my graphics turned down for raids its a colorful mess of chaos.
can someone explain “private auras” very quickly
is private aura something like the tirna scythe puzzle?
private auras require awareness on the raider that something has happened. (Smolderon orbs are perfect.) Echo heart, not so much because of how little reaction time there was.
This means that there’s no way for weak aura packs to integrate the icon with the rest either, so now you have an awkward icon in the middle of the screen that you can’t properly customize, and can be hard to spot as well due to its size/color being in the middle of rainbow explosions of effects on the target you’re looking at.
Not an issue. Position your weakauras better.
Private auras just mean that the aura (buff or debuff) cannot be detected by addons. When I don’t use WA packs the icons are not somewhere on my screen where I can see them.
Yes, so if the in-game functionality is lacking and you want an audio sound for whatever reason, you can’t. You can only add a generic sound which requires specific knowledge of the wow lua API. On top of that you can’t see the duration, which you can if you use addons to change the private aura anchor.
Still trolling I see? Private auras can’t be anchored into groups, meaning that if you have a specific position you have all of your icons, you can’t mix them in, so you need a static position somewhere else on your screen where it may or may not overlap. It’s extremely inefficient and annoying to deal with.
idk,. it sounds like a nothingburger to me. Dungeon and raid encounters might generally play out as mostly scripted already with so many things being on timers or HP thresholds, but it sounds to me like some players want it to be even more boiled down into just flashing different colors on the screen to tell them what to do instead of paying attention to what’s actually happening in the game. You don’t want to watch for mechanics, you want to look at icons/alerts that addons are throwing up so you know what to do?
Kinda depends, one could make the argument blizzard has lapsed in their ability to make telegraphed or immediately recognisable mechanics because of this phenomenon.
Private auras can be fine if they’re used sparingly for mechanics that focus on group play, but they need to be clearly telegraphed and offer sufficient time to solve. Given what we’ve seen of them so far it’s reasonable to be skeptical.
Timers for when something is going to happen are often important because you reach a level where doing something in preparation before the mechanic has been telegraphed or even began can be important, these things can range from something as simple as positioning to an entire healing spell sequence on disc to pre apply atonements.
I see the mechanic on my character, but if the debuff is 10s before it drops something, I’d have like 7s of unnecessary downtime just because I can’t see how long it lasts. It would be different if I had a button to let it expire myself but I’m forced to watch a tiny icon in the top-right of my screen to see the duration.
They have failed to add the combination of clear visuals and clear sounds, so far it’s mostly just visuals. I rely on sounds in-game because my eyesight isn’t the best. They have sparingly used the “bomb” countdown timer for some mechanics, but that doesn’t show a timer, which is very important when you play a spec that relies on not missing a single global (like Outlaw) for CDR reasons.
Yes. This. 100%.
It’s not even just a private auras problem. Big boss mechanics are just not telegraphed well enough. They never have been. There’s a reason the community has been relying on add-ons forever.
Private Auras are only “necessary” when the mechanics are poorly designed/telegraphed. We wouldn’t be using add-ons to solve mechanics if the mechanics were easy to understand.
I don’t necessarily agree. Take something like the orbs on smolderon. A mechanic that no matter how clearly telegraphed it is, ultimately it’s always on the three players to communicate / work out a system for how to handle it once it is in play. Private auras prevents you from having something decide the order the orbs should be detonated for you.
Private auras are necessary in this case to make the mechanic anything more than a game of Simon says.
Why can’t you anchor weakauras dealing with private auras into groups?
Your anchoring where the stuff appears on your screen ( the weakaura.) Which… functions just like every other weakaura…
And you can add any sounds you want.
Please learn how weakauras work.
How the weakaura works, is 1) you press a button. 2) text appears on screen after button is pressed.
This means you can choose HOW the weakaura shows up on your screen (and whatever relative positioning you want it to have) and you can add any sound you want.
I think smolderon orbs is fine. Echo heart, no.
Blizzard needs a ton of work on the visibility of their mechanics before continue attaching private auras to them. They are simply not good at building into the game how to handle their mechanics, which is why weakauras have become so strong. The idea of forcing us to cope with their garbage telegraphing is extremely disappointing.
Lol yes. Obscure edges on circles, sometimes mechanics have larger or smaller hit areas than indicated, purple swirl on purple floor with purple lines and purple bolts and—
Cannot hit what you cannot see! Lies I say!
I personally don’t have an issue with my WAs getting in the way as they are mostly auditory or made to make things pretty. I hate the massive raid WAs and only use them when I’m asked to, but then again I’ve yet to even clear heroic so my opinion doesn’t really count on their usefulness I guess! 
I didn’t even know hidden auras were a thing! Neat! I kinda just react to what the boss says or what’s happening.
People download a lot of weakauras just to turn them off because they don’t need it. The critical ones are for inter-group communication. If your weakaura can affect something on someone else’s screen, that’s the one that you do need.
Or if you won’t know where to go without it.
At this point they should just say “No boss mods addons allowed” and properly design fights to account for that.
If they would give us enough time to react and solve it without an addon, we would, for the 3 mechanics per tier on only the mythic version of 1-2 boss where a WA is actually required.