Since we are on the topic of banning addons this week I was wondering what folks would think of banning Deadly Boss Mods / Weak Auras. I think a strong argument can be made that these addons have a large impact on Raiding and Mythic + that may or may not be healthy for the game.
The dev team already admitted that they design encounters with DBM in mind. I would imagine that they have to ramp up the complexity and difficulty more than they would otherwise. Maybe having mechanics that were more simple but you had no idea when they were happening would be more fun instead of what we have today.
So would you play Shadowlands if DBM was banned?
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The only thing DBM does is announce mechanics using the internal timer. Thats why it can announce when different phases start (Vorkall, Hivemind) and deadbrain mechanics such as spreading and stacking that are in that timeline.
Same reason it can’t tell you which lane to stand in during Vexiona’s breath. If DBM was removed, you could easily replace is with a WA. All it is is a timeline.
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No addons have been banned this week.
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No. That’s what I think.
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I think one huge difference between these issues is that Blizzard has outright stated (a long time ago, I think during WoD/Legion) that they are designing raids and their difficulty with the assumption that the seasoned raider is using DBM.
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“The players who generate all of the AH traffic are using addon-driven automation to gain a competitive economic advantage over other players”
Pretty hypocritical to say we can use DBM and WAs to gain a competitive edge but not something to help post auctions (since they’ve created hundreds of thousands of items in this game).
You know how competitive WAs is? World first guild have people dedicated to code WAs to help them in fights. Tracking interrupt orders, calling out specific player positions, etc.
Why are they going after people that are simply listing all the crap items they’ve built up in the game who now need an addon to help with that, instead of DBM/WA that actually affects competitive/sponsored gameplay.
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I think the issue isn’t so much DBM it’s that they design on the assumption you’re using them but make no in game indication of that, so people are left relying on out of game things to determine they need a third party addon.
I’m not totally sure how they could handle that though. Banning DBM wouldn’t make sense. Designing for DBM has to be done or it trivializes encounters (which doesn’t bother me but would a few people). So what do you do?
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Aw, I really like WA though. As someone that doesn’t even do LFR or hasn’t ever done M+. I enjoy setting up my UI to track something like Flametongue and Frostbrand on my Shaman then giving them a fire/ice type of feel with the various customization options. Even slapping a quick WA for tracking Rend on Arms and then making it look more “Night Warrior-like” was fun. I’d rather not lose that even if I don’t do instanced content.
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Most people are bad at raiding even when their hands are being held… can’t imagine how bad it’d get without addons babysitting people.
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OFF TOPIC
Didn’t Ion have a hand in creating DBM? Wasn’t that an Elitist Jerk thing?
And this is dumb if it isn’t core.
Either make it core or block it, because requiring 3rd part addons is dumb, and allowing them to trivialize content designed if they aren’t there is also dumb.
But: that would take work.
I mean they have added some elements of DBM, in the warnings they have now. They couldn’t add timers though.
What they would have to do is add more of those warnings for everything and build encounters around those sort of things rather than just when abilities go off.
Why would they be? Or should they be?
You can make a world of a difference through your own addons.
Even if they were someone else would make an assistive addon that would then help with a dungeon.
I think the idea is to ban all of those types of addons (even all addons, period), not just DBM and WeakAuras.
Which in and of itself is an interesting idea. A lot of other games don’t allow addons and have interesting content, some of it even better than WoW (YMMV). I am pretty sure FFXIV doesn’t have addons, let alone boss mods and they have some really unique and interesting boss mechanics.
I think they could do it but they would have to totally change their design of encounters to not want you to use addons. Part of the issue is Blizzard’s encounters are often designed around knowing when to do something or when something happens. So timers greatly help. If they didn’t build like that it would lessen the need for timers, especially with warnings already baked in.
They could prevent any addon they wished; they could also move to a whitelisted addon system. It isn’t that hard.
Continuing with DBM working as it does is the path of least resistance, though.
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DBM and WA in the raiding space have been in a positive feedback loop with encounter design since Wrath, to be honest. It culminated in the way Mythic Archimonde turned out with the WA used to track Wrought Chaos directions; at that point Blizzard made a call to kill location coordinate data available to addons inside dungeons and raids. (Can’t forget the impact of AVR even in Wrath either, where they made the call to kill camera data available to addons.)
Even despite that limitation they haven’t really pulled out of the arms race. Their design still readily tests and often exceeds the existing capabilities, so new plugins or WAs are required. Vicious cycle.
I’d like to see it fixed but I’m also wary of them dumbing down encounters too much, since they tend to be unable to temper their approach on large, impactful changes like this. It’s always a pendulum spectrum of extremes.
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They could but addons in general are such a part of the ecosystem that it would be very disruptive.
For example TRP/RP are core to roleplay servers.
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How much money has blizz saved by farming out interface development to a free third part labor force?
DBM and Weak Auras shouldn’t be banned, however, they also shouldn’t be necessary.
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They can do that but it would more likely be through changing the game itself (i.e the new auction house interaction limitations).
Far more likely they’ll just let it sit and make small changes along the way (like the AH change).