With The War Within, addons in World of Warcraft are being curtailed. Especially in “Mythic+”, new abilities are introduced where addons will not help.
When it comes to tough dungeons in the “Mythic+” category, most players of World of Warcraft use various addons. Interface enhancements like “DBM” provide clarity in fights, WeakAuras tracks many abilities and can be massively customized.
However, for The War Within, some heroes of Azeroth may already be coming to terms with the idea that the effectiveness of these addons will be limited. Because Blizzard is introducing more “Private Auras” in dungeons.
What are “Private Auras”? “Private Auras” are effects in the game, such as abilities from bosses or debuffs, to which addons have only limited access.
Normally, interface addons can read extremely accurately when and where which effect comes into play. Players are often immediately informed through addons when they receive a negative effect and usually know right away how to react.
With “Private Auras”, the ability of addons to read these effects is drastically reduced. Generally, only basic information can be displayed. This means that players must act themselves in the case of these auras and cannot rely on an addon to suggest the best course of action.
What does this mean concretely? In short, this change means that certain abilities can no longer be tracked by “Boss Mods” or WeakAuras and therefore will not work with these addons – or only in a very limited way.
Of course, it remains to be seen whether Blizzard will stick to this idea or if they will revert these adjustments during the course of the alpha or even expand upon them.
How the community is reacting: This change is being heatedly discussed in the community. Depending on where you look, the introduction of “Private Auras” in dungeons is seen particularly negatively or as an opportunity to force Blizzard into better, clearer gameplay.
On wowhead, this is viewed critically, with comments like:
- “What the hell is wrong with this company?”
- “Actively fighting against the joy of the player base is really a good hill to die on.”
- “Why are they trying so hard to implement bad ideas? This has clearly failed, please take it back and do something else, Blizzard.”
In the WoW subreddit, the discussion is somewhat more neutral, and at least the possibilities are acknowledged. It mentions:
- “Okay, hear me out: How about they make the sound effects, graphics, telegraphs, and colors uniform instead of making them random every time, so that we need WeakAura to even recognize anything?”
- “Hopefully they will continue to implement and adjust them throughout the expansion, along with the design of the mechanics, so that one day we won’t need addons anymore.”
What do you think about the increased number of hidden “Private Auras”? Is it a good thing that makes the game in The War Within even more challenging? Or does Blizzard need to first get a handle on the effects chaos? We would love to hear your opinion in the comments!
