In my honest opinion addons like gearscore, an automated lfg/lfr tool, raider i.o etc will ruin the game. It won’t feel authentic at all. A zero tolerance policy NEEDS to be put in place and any attempt to work around blizzards code must be dealt with accordingly. The addon(s) need to be rendered useless. If it were up to me though, I’d also shadow ban the author. The question is, will blizzard take the necessary steps to ensure these addons won’t work?
Trivial addons that were around like nameplates, raid frames, threat meters etc are completely fine.
Yeah, it kind of breaks down when the stat distribution of items (as well as the close proximity in item level between tiers) means that a dungeon blue can be best in slot for several phases.
Ilvl means nothing for how good gear is in classic. That’s why we used to have gearscore that would automate rating someone’s gear based off of theorycrafters rather than ilvl. I don’t think people realize how much easier classic was that min maxing just isn’t as necessary.
Thing im really not ok are game changing add ons like DBM… DBM gives you so much additional game information that the developers never intended… thats what makes the Boss fights hard… not having a visual timer countdown for every boss ability, big text telling you what to do and when, or even where to go or stand, basically telling you how to do the fight… Are we really going to go back to retail levels of gameplay relying more on add ons for problem solving/work arounds than actually doing the feat outselves? where guilds require people to have like 5 add ons before even raiding because people become so reliant on them…
can we just play the game the developers intended us to play without third party programmers and people looking to dumb down World of Warcraft by giving you the easy way out instead of learning yourself.
I agree, which is why they have to develop with DBM in mind and the mechanics are just out of control stupid. Half of the raid is running around in circles like a chicken with its head cut off.
How about people learning raid mechanics without DBM? Revolutionary, I know.
I just want to be able think about raiding somewhat competitively knowing all the players are the same playing field no advantages through add ons for raiding. Not… some guild doing well because they require a modernized DBM amongst other raiding add ons players use nowdays…
Obviously ilvl cant work the same way as it does in retail because of the way stat caps and class mechanics use stats differently for shared gear. Anyone who actually used it to gauge player gear or skill would be severely gimping themselves.
The real discussion needs to be around the LFG/LFR type addons. There’s a difference between an automated LFG/LFR addon that just pairs you with people in the exact same way retail does and addons like Vqueue that parses the chat for key dungeon/class phrases and puts it in a UI that makes finding groups easier than watching world chat, but still requiring player input. Obviously any automation should be banned, but my opinion on something like Vqueue being allowed is really dependent on what they plan on doing with server populations after layering. 10k+ players on the same chat channel makes watching chat for groups a complete nightmare.
I have to say that an automated group finder would be bullocks but the current version popular LFG addon used on private servers running 1.12 (Trivial I know) simply scans your chat window for LFG/LFM messages and compiles them in an easy to read list. It’s called vQueue. This is pretty handy and I hope we get something like it versus staring blankly at chat looking for a specific dungeon group. Nothing is automated aside from the message it types out for you to request an invite, which can be edited or not even used if you like. (Sereik mentioned this above!)
Would I join a guild who does not use DBM? Hell yeah I would, but I don’t think DBM is going anywhere. Mechanics are often unclear and even somewhat random in Vanilla, not to say that you cannot learn on your own - but without DBM chances are you’d just have a raid leader shouting what to do over voip.
I don’t see how gearscore would effect anything lol. All it does is add up and give you the average item level of your gear. PUG raids often make you come and get inspected before invites in my experience anyways.
IMO if addons become a problem, ban all inter-player Addon communication. You can’t realtime queue for a dungeon if your addon can’t talk to anyone else in the queue.
DBM and Damage Meters don’t need to communicate. They run off their own triggers. And you have the modern combat log, so the old communal Meters stuff is gone.
DBM uses the raid information and in game triggers itself. It doesn’t need to communicate with other people.
The advanced features of DBM do communicate. See Ignite drop button functionality.
Idk anything about the modern combat log, but the main reason the meters communicated and synced were so they would be accurate if you were out of range of the combat log on fights like c’thun.
Which isn’t an issue in the modern combat log, because it is instance wide since 2.0.
There shouldn’t be anything in the old dungeons that need it. And communal debuff tracking should be forced to be done manually, like we did in the old days.