A Fond Farewell to AVR/AVRE

I’m sure you’ve heard the news by now. In patch 3.3.5 Blizzard intends to intentionally break AVR/AVRE. It is not the first time that something like this has happened, but it does strike me as a bit odd as to the reasoning behind it.

If you missed the full announcement here it is for you

Bashiok — AVR Mod Broken in 3.3.5

This is a notice that we’re making changes in 3.3.5 in attempts to break the ability for the AVR (Augmented Virtual Reality) mod to continue functioning. For those unaware, this mod allows players to draw in the 3D space of the game world, which can then be shared with others who are also using the mod. In some cases this manifests itself through drawing/tagging/defacing the game world, but more popularly is used to give visual guides for dungeon and raid encounters.

We’re making this change for two reasons. The invasive nature of a mod altering and/or interacting with the game world (virtually or directly) is not intended and not something we will allow. World of Warcraft UI addons are never intended to interact with the game world itself. This is mirrored in our stance and restriction of model and texture alterations. The second reason is that it removes too much player reaction and decision-making while facing dungeon and raid encounters. While some other mods also work to this end, we find that AVR and the act of visualizing strategy within the game world simply goes beyond what we’re willing to allow.

The change we’re making in attempts to break the functionality is light in its touch and approach. When blocking any functionality we run the risk of affecting other mods, but we’ve targeted the changes as carefully as possible. If we find that the AVR mod (or any mod attempting to replicate its functions) are usable after 3.3.5 we will take further, more drastic steps.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that they are wrong to not want to see mods like this disabled, but they claim it is because of the invasive nature of the mod and that it allows altering and interacting with the game world. Well, we interact with the game world all the time don’t we? We kill a mob, that’s interacting right there! Silly statement I know but it is the truth. Simply by being in the world and playing the game we are interacting with the world and on some level altering the state of play for those around us. As far as calling it invasive or that it alters the game world, I don’t know. Is it any more invasive than any other boss mod? Take a look at most boss mods, they mark players that are affected by effects, provide warnings both visual and audio before a boss does an ability and effectively simplify encounters. Some even give you arrows telling you where to run from an effect, others include range finders to tell you how far away you are from other players in order to avoid making some boss abilities chain or augment. Mods like Auctioneer allow you to alter the way you interact with the auction house, postal allows you to modify how you access the mail in the game world, power auras allows you to be notified of every single buff and debuff in the game and mods like grid allow you to alter how you view the members of your party and allow you control over what information is filtered through and omen alerts you to threat compared to all other party members.

So what makes AVR so taboo? I was thinking about it and it reminded me of a funny story from my pen and paper days.

I was playing Dungeons and Dragons (tabletop pen and paper version) with a group of friends. Our party was supposed to set up an ambush to take out a band of mercs about three times our size. I was playing a halfling rogue at the time and was the party’s wet works guy. I would sneak around, spy on things and help set traps. Our fighter in the party was a tactical genius (the player has since moved on to a military career and it is very fitting for him as he honestly was a huge strategist) and came up with a plan that involved key movements at key points in time. My character happened to have a bunch of chalk, and came up with the idea of setting markers on the walls and floor to indicate thresholds for those lying in wait. It could indicate when to attack and after a point when to break off and regroup or attack from a different direction. The fighter loved this idea, and we set about marking the ruins we were using as the kill zone in markings the party would understand. We then set various traps and waited for our ambush to take place. As the mercs entered the ruins we watched from hiding as they breached the thresholds, we attacked. The mercs moved past another marking and we dove back into hiding and onto the next position. This continued until the band was no more. We took no casualties and had a well executed plan thanks to a series of chalk markings. The GM joked at the time of having allowed us to have such general items and them coming in so handy.

So, is AVR so different than the chalk we used in that game session? I don’t feel that it is when used to say, mark spots on the ground for people to collapse to or stand at during certain encounters. On a personal level I will miss it not because of anything it did during a boss fight, but I truly loved the way it interacted with Totem Radius in showing me the effective range of my totems in real time. That said I wont lose any sleep over it going away, but I think Blizzard may have been a bit hasty in their aggression towards this mod. Personally I don’t feel it is any more invasive than any other mod they currently allow in the game, and honestly once you allow mods or addons of any sort you are inviting a sort of intrusion into that which you created.

Did it make things too simple and remove player thought from the game? I don’t think so either, I’ve seen enough people with it installed still mess up quite frequently. It was not a guaranteed win for boss fights otherwise we would see a lot more people having downed ICC heroic mode when using this. In the end a mod is no substitution for attentiveness to the game and player skill. This one just happened to let us John Madden things a bit, and occasionally draw funny objects where they don’t belong.

So what do you think? Do you support Blizzard decision to break the mod? Do you think it made things too easy? Will you miss being able to draw stick figures randomly in ICC?

37 thoughts on “A Fond Farewell to AVR/AVRE”

  1. I never actually used AVR, but people in my guild were talking about using it as we have people in the guild who are 1. a little elderly and hard of hearing and 2. sight impared people. AVR is great for those people. By breaking this mod, it’s like Blizzard is trying to confine this game to people who don’t have disabilities.

    Is that right? Cause I sure don’t think it is :/
    .-= Fiorra´s last blog ..And as scheduled…more ranting! 😀 =-.

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  2. Fiorra: I have to disagree with you there. AVR offered way too much of an edge and as Bashiok said, there was never an addon that was intended to visually “paint” the in game world in such a way. While I sympathize and I can see how AVR could help such players, at the same time, encounter simplification must be something that is taken into account as well.

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  3. I don’t see the confusion. Part of the encounters are this makes easier is the distance and placing. Blizzard has never allowed this information to be player-obtainable; the current distance checkers obtain their data by doing a “is this action doable?” test.

    What avr does is replace the game’s markers with it’s own, easier markers. You can make a case that this allows those with disabilities to play, but how did these people reach level 80 in the first place, critical parts of the interface are much harder to work with? How do you stop non-disabled people from using this to turn an equal chance into an advantage?

    I think the main problem here is it was automated. Boss mods still require some degree of thought – you need to watch the timer, cleanse the listed name, stack around the circle. Once you add in drawing everything directly onto the screen itself, you remove this thought. There are on ground effects, obviously, but a half second of thought would realize that with one, maybe two exceptions, these universally mean “gtfo”, so aren’t what the addon is making a problem with.

    Ultimately, Blizzard thinks that an addon replacing parts of its game with easier parts, instead of supplementing it, is wrong and I think most players would agree on this. The question, I guess, is “Do you think AVR replaces parts of the game?”

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  4. If players are allowed to draw on the gameworld, you also open up new avenues of griefing. Presumably AVR allows a player to read anything written by anyone else with AVR. While I assume this can be disabled outside of raids, not everyone would do it, and it is only a matter of time before “God hate fags” or some similar disgusting graffiti showed up on the walls or Org. Even if AVR doesn’t provide this capability, the ruling that “players can’t draw on the game world” exists partly for this reason, and AVR unfortunately crosses that line.

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  5. Members of my guild suggested using it. After we looked at what it did the officers decided not to implement it. Blizz speak often confuses things. It just crossed the line, it might have been just over it, but enough for Blizzard to notice.

    Really with the Disabled thing… come on, why not break out the racist card too!

    The last sentence is what worries me the most. Let’s just hope the mod community hears this one loud and clear.

    “If we find that the AVR mod (or any mod attempting to replicate its functions) are usable after 3.3.5 we will take further, more drastic steps.”

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  6. Interaction with the game world aside … I think there’s a difference between mods that provide information and mods that entirely remove judgement from the game; AVR is the latter. To date, the boss mods that I’ve trialed and used have only informed me of events or elements of the fight, and never removed my own judgement of what to do about them. I use Power Auras to alert me that my WS has fallen, not refresh it for me. I use DXE to tell me when LK is casting Infest, not to time my CH cast for me. Judgement is what makes a fight challenging, and it is the variable that normalizes encounters for all of us.

    Personally, I’m glad Blizzard is taking a hard stance on this. It doesn’t take a mod being “a guaranteed win” for it to cross the line.
    .-= Vixsin´s last blog ..The Argument for Elitism – Part I =-.

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  7. Matt: Thankyou for your feedback. I can see how it would make players have more of an edge over others and make every ICC boss trivial. DBM sadly doesn’t work for every player and I’m not trying to play the disabled card…I’m just saying that it would be nice that they took every aspect of their player base into consideration. If they don’t want people to raid (especially those that find it hard due to their disabilities) then they shouldn’t make it so tempting with the faceroll Heroic T9 gear…

    Honestly, I’m waiting for them to break DBM next.
    .-= Fiorra´s last blog ..And as scheduled…more ranting! 😀 =-.

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  8. AVR does make the game too easy for some encounters. I always PUG raids since I can’t find a late night raid team, and was able to 1-shot both Rotface and Festergut on my first attempt ever, without anyone dying. Putricide was another story, so not all boss encounters are trivialized with the mod.

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  9. In essence AVR/AVRE acts to alter the client simulation of the game by providing information we do not normally have access to. In a similar way someone could write a client replacement that played WoW in a strictly top down view with a massive field of view with effects being highlighted as Yellow circle -> Red if effect.

    There are already a lot of effects that have warning markers, AVR adds ones for ones that we are not supposed to have markers for. No other mod works the same way (providing timers / warnings based on combat log). I can totally understand why Blizzard are breaking it. Giving you a chalkboard before the pull and a map would be fine, however drawing in game while in combat gives you a combat HUD more like Halo than WoW, when they give us Power Armour we should get AVR.

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  10. Our guild started to look at this before the announcement to kill it was made. We were actually leaning away from using it specifically because it altered the game experience too much. Learning the audio/visual queues and perceiving how far apart 10ft really is are all part of the skill of the game. Very obvious markers would be a bit too easy.

    Blizzard is definitely making more on-screen announcements of boss abilities. Some of them I originally thought were from DBM. I’m sure that they’re going in a direction of making DBM no longer “manditory” to raid.
    .-= Cassieo´s last blog ..Know Your Healers =-.

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  11. Watch, they’re going to disable it so that when they roll out their own version of the mod integrated into the stock UI, the makers of this mod can’t sue them. That’s what the whole addon industry is for blizz anyhow…let these dev’s make the mods on their own and eventually take it and place it in the WoW stock UI. Look at questhelper for example. The blizz quest tracker is just blizz’s spin on that. IMO, look for AVR-Like capabilities in Cataclysm.

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  12. To me, the real story is why AVR was created in the first place, and that is squarely on Blizzard’s failure in game design. If the encounters revolved around playing your class, like the old Vanilla encounters, no one would see the need for this. Unfortunately, Blizz has changed the game to the encounters revolving around “when the boss makes this particular emote, move to this spot within 2 seconds or the raid wipes.” If every blinking fight wasn’t like that, there would be no demand for this mod in the first place. Blizzard is treating the symptom, not the disease.

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  13. “Part of the encounters are this makes easier is the distance and placing. Blizzard has never allowed this information to be player-obtainable; the current distance checkers obtain their data by doing a “is this action doable?” test.”

    This isn’t true — once Blizzard implemented instance maps, addons could get everyone’s coordinates and figure out distance that way.

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  14. @Fiorra

    I highly doubt they actively do not want the disabled playing. Infact, if there was a large enough player base of these people, I bet they’d implement some method to help them. We’re really starting to drift into another subject here, though.

    @erstyx

    As far as I’m aware, instance maps work like battleground maps, in that you can not obtain data from the “points” of other players, only modify the display of the points. I suppose it’d be possible to transmit your own to other’s via a mod channel but that’s too obvious that they would of allowed it; they’ve removed this sort of information in the past. You used to be able to pull positioning information from the minimap in a similar method, and they killed that back in ssc era(I think?). I guess you might be able to overlay shapes on these points to represent areas, check these for overlap and report back but doubt that is doable, let alone allowable.

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  15. It is my understanding that when breaking AVR, it will also break the functionality of DXE to use arrows to show you which way to move.

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  16. @kalilaa: nope, erstyx is mostly right on this. The reason range finders work now is that since 3.3, coordinates of you and your fellow raid members can be obtained in instances. You’ll note w/ AVR-E, the mechanics it does notifications for are either based on where players *are*, or where they *were* at a specific time. All that information will still be obtainable. What will be gone is the ability to get information about the camera angle relative to the environment, which means the pseudo-3d stuff will go away.

    @Valys: not the way they’re currently breaking it. Those arrows just depend on the location info, and that is still available. If they do break it, *all* the various boss mods range finders will break, most likely.

    Some work is already being done that essentially presents some of the info AVR/AVR-E gave in a HUD, kind of like a big enhanced version of a minimap. If the main objection given truly was the main objection (that they didn’t like the pseudo-3d drawing), then they may allow those sort of addons to be around, at least for a while; that aspect of things *won’t* likely break without breaking the DXE arrows and the range finders.

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  17. “So what makes AVR so taboo?”

    The primary difference between AVR and all of the other mods you listed is that the other mods interact with your UI, whereas AVR is designed to interact with the game world itself. I think this point is best exemplified when you look at the difference between AVR’s effects and PowerAura’s effects: the former mark the ground (and maybe walls) of the world so that they remain stationary to the world when you change your view, whereas the latter are just kind of layered over the UI as if they were drawn onto a pane of glass in front of the camera. I think that’s what Blizzard is referring to when they talk about the “invasive nature of a mod altering and/or interacting with the game world”—the fact that mods are designed to be elements of the UI, not of the game itself.

    Also, I’m not sure your DnD analogy is particularly apt. I don’t see AVR as being analogous to the chalk your halfling happened to have on hand, because there are already in-game items our characters have available to serve as markers. Things like smoke flares, beams of light, campfires, banners (like the ones from the Argent Tournament), Brewfest kegs, braziers, etc. etc. So where your halfling could mark things with chalk, our characters can mark things with the items I described above.

    If you want to continue with the comparison to DnD, here’s how I see it: the game world (of WarCraft) is the equivalent to the game world of DnD (i.e. what you see in WoW’s game world is the equivalent of what your character sees in DnD). Most UI elements of WoW are the equivalent of the UI of DnD—the pen and paper sitting in front of you. Now, there are some exceptions, but for the most part the game world and the UI are completely separate things, and mods are by and large designed to be part of the UI, not part of the game world. Thus, things like Omen or DBM are effectively metagaming elements that we players use to enhance the gameplay experience, not elements our characters have access to in the game world.

    In this sense, AVR is a UI element that invades into the game world. I don’t see AVR as the equivalent to the chalk your DnD halfling used to mark the walls, but rather the pen you (the player) used to mark into the game world to explain the plan to the other players, even though your characters may not have any writing/marking utensils available to them. If you were to look at your DnD scenario from an outside perspective with the difference that it wasn’t the halfling that used chalk to mark on the game world, but rather the player of the halfling that used his pen and paper to directly mark onto the game world, how would you feel?

    PS: Yes, there are some UI elements (most notably the in-game map) that we can assume exist in the game world, too. There are also some mods (such as FlagRSP and Gryphonheart Items (no relation)) that try to inject some flavor into the game world, but they don’t actually influence the game world itself—they’re still elements of the UI. FlagRSP can’t actually give your character a scar in the game world, it can only ask other players to interpret your character as having a scar. Similarly, Gryphonheart Items (again, no relation) can’t actually create a red carpet that your character can roll out in the game world, it can only ask other players to imagine your character has such a carpet, and to imagine that it’s there in the game world if said character rolls it out. AVR gets too close to actually having a red carpet laid out that can be seen in the game world.
    .-= Gryphonheart´s last blog ..Cataclysm’s Shared 10/25 Raid Lockouts =-.

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  18. Fiorra: I remember Dwarf Priest wrote an epicly long post about disabled players and their accessibility playing WoW (I navigated back a few pages but got way too lazy to dig up the link). For example, click to move. Players could click to a location they wanted on a map instead of holding down the keys and relying on the mouse to turn and so forth. Is it the best method of movement? No, but it’s still possible. Color blind options are available so that players who cannot see specific colors know which corresponding gem goes with which gem slot. Of course, there is still much work to be done in terms of widening accessibility but I would put fourth that it is more accessible than other games of this type.
    .-= Matticus´s last blog ..A Fond Farewell to AVR/AVRE =-.

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  19. AVR was fine. AVR was like your Rogue’s chalk – a plan, laid out for your allies to see and be aware of and react to.

    AVR-Encounters was not fine. AVR-E would be like the DM drawing things in chalk in real-time as the mercenary band came through, with very blatant indicators of what to do.

    I think that losing AVR, while sad, is a necessary loss to nip something like AVR-E in the bud.

    And quite honestly, having seen AVRE in action on Heroic Putricide, Heroic Sindragosa, Heroic Rotface, and similar encounters, it does make things too easy. There is a difference between “stand 8 yards apart” and “make sure my circle doesn’t intersect anyone else’s, and don’t stand in any circle of this color, and make sure no raiders are in my circle when this happens” and on and on and on. AVRE trivialized things.

    If the encounters revolved around playing your class, like the old Vanilla encounters

    …you never actually PLAYED Vanilla, did you?
    .-= Rilgon Arcsinh´s last blog ..Ready, Steady, Go! =-.

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  20. I’ve never set foot in Naxx, let alone ICC, but I do hear alot of complaints about content being too easy. I know they’re most unfounded, and the ones that are might be from 25m raiders stepping into 10m raids, overgeared.

    AVR is to a raid, as cutout shoe prints are to a Britney Spears dance routine. You can put the shoe prints in the right place, and have 25 players hitting it one more time, but after a while, the participants may feel like they’re in a really bad spoof of Thriller, and their one of the zombie extras, while the Lich King dones a silver sequined glove and attempts to moonwalk all over your posse. You’ll get through the event, but you’re not fooling anyone except yourself if you think you really deserved that kill.

    Now maybe Blizzard can’t come out and say, hey, you’re making our content too easy, so they do something like, hey, you’re defacing our artwork.. naughty! Although I’d not blame them if they did. For some encounters it might not seem like it, but I’m sure they put alot of effort in putting those encounters together, and having some tool come along and make it all pie is not cool. AVR would probably have become the next GearScore… “LFM 10ICC, must have 5K GS, pst achieves, and how many fingers have I scribbled on the Dalaran Fountain”.

    (BTW, I have no opinion on the quality of Britney Spears dance routines. I could have mentioned anyone, but given she’s doesn’t actually sing at her concerts, you’d only be going to see the floor show anyway, right? And it had better be good, right?)

    Now, if AVR is cutout shoe print, what does that make DBM? Probably the music score on auto queue. Kinda puts it in shakey ground, but I would liken the raid leader to the conductor. DBM just makes things a bit more obvious than emotes and phases.
    .-= Colerejuste´s last blog ..Heirloom zoom zoom =-.

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  21. To be honest, I find it funny that all the “hardcore” players are so upset with AVR. Who cares if it made the game easy? Were people having fun playing with their group of peers? I’d bet they probably were. This is just more of the same, casuals vs. hardcore players. Give me a break. God forbid mod developers were able to boil the game down to such a degree.

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  22. Who cares if it made the game easy?

    People whose guilds are making it mandatory to use (to the degree of demanding live screenshot proof of having it active, installed, and running during a raid), irregardless of whether it impacts them negatively in terms of connection capacity or system performance? I know my guild was moving towards mandatory use of AVR/AVRE. I didn’t and still don’t use it aside from the one time I tried it in 10-man to see just how much it trivialized things, and I’m pretty sure I would have been bored senseless if I were required to utilize AVRE.
    .-= Rilgon Arcsinh´s last blog ..Ready, Steady, Go! =-.

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  23. I don’t understand Blizzard. They are making the content easier and easier (think of buff in ICC, T10 pieces with emblems and so on), but suddenly they think that AVR makes some encounters too easy (?). I was quite succesful without AVR / AVRE, but this is not the point. I do like these addons. I know this is Blizzard’s game and they can do whatever they like, but I will miss AVR / AVRE. What will be next? Will they eliminate Recount, DBM, Carbonite, Auctioneer, … or Gearscore? (the last one would be a nice move).

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  24. I’m glad they are breaking AVR. I never used it myself, but a number of the raiders in my guild do and I was always afraid that they would become dependant on it, and even be less situationally aware when it was inevitably broken.

    I’d really like to see all boss mods broken in Cataclysm. Encounters would have to be designed somewhat differently, I’d like to see them based more on knowledge of your class and decision-making rather than watching timers and fast reaction times.
    .-= Jasyla´s last blog ..Pets Galore! =-.

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  25. I think most people are missing the main reason Blizzard feels like they have to shut AVR down. When you can draw a large set of genitalia on the stairs in VOA, take a screenshot, then put it on the web. Now Blizzard has a real problem. Note that the raid functionality of AVR was 2nd on their list of reasons.

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  26. @Karwin Going to go ahead and disagree with that point there. If that was the case Blizzard would be mounting a campaign against photoshop, mspaint etc etc. Nothing stops a person from taking a screen-shot, manipulating it outside of the game to say… put pieces of anatomy in there and then post it online. It is the same quality as drawing lines on things in game with AVR.

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  27. @Jasyla

    I am wondering what an encounter relying on class knowledge and decision making would look like.

    I also don’t relish watching timers or worrying about my reaction time, but I can’t envision a fight where class knowledge would come into play more than it currently does.

    As for decision making, I think there are a lot of decisions being made in current encounters, but with all the strategy guides out there, most players default to the “experts” about how each fight should be handled.

    I guess I’m just not sure how fights could be done differently.
    .-= timejumper´s last blog ..Sindragosa fight shows promise =-.

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  28. @timejumper

    It would be more difficult to design encounters this way, but I think with a combination of class design and enounter design changes, it could be done. Currently, most fights require the same thing from players. DPS presses 2-6 buttons over and over, trying to do maximum damage. Healers watch health bars and react to them. Everyone moves out of bad stuff on the ground. There can be more to it than those things.

    – Use of CC or kiting is rarely used in fights, and it could be used a lot more.
    – You could have certain abilities or debuffs that were more effective on some types of enemies than others.
    – Most classes have damage-reducing abilities, and players can use them as they see fit (although many don’t use them at all). Have fights that require you to use these abilities in order to survive.
    – Put optional buffs into encounters (orbs you can hit, adds you can heal, etc.) The buff increases your damage/healing, but lowers your health, or takes a chunk away from your mana pool. You’d need to choose the correct times to use these abilities.
    – When poisons or curses are used, you could have a limited amount of time to cleanse them before they leave a non-cleansable debuff on people. Healers would have decide who gets cleansed and who doesn’t.

    There are also some neat mechanics that have already been used that I think could be used more often:
    – Having people stop dps/healing to perform an action that would boost the dps of the raid (eg. Magtheridon cube-clicking), but make it an optional thing (not a spell interrupt) so raid leaders can decide when/if to use it
    – Use of slows, stuns and fast target switching (eg. Val’kyrs on Lich King)
    – Having to stop attacking/healing to prevent damage (eg. Unchained Magic or Permeating Chill on Sindragosa)
    – Have bosses with resistances that change (eg. Chromaggus) so people need to change up their spell usage

    I’d really just like to see the average raider forced to make more use of their abilities and have to decide when to use them.
    .-= Jasyla´s last blog ..Everything is a Hunter Weapon =-.

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  29. When I first saw AVR I decided that I wasn’t going to use it and my guild wasn’t going to use it because it *felt* like it wasn’t intended functionality. I didn’t think that we were going to get in trouble for using it, since it is a mod that works in the game and if Blizzard didn’t like it they could break it. But I really expected they would break it sooner rather than later.

    @Deia: The stacking buff in ICC does not make raiding easier, what it allowed them to do was making raiding harder than it has ever been. They tuned heroic Lich King assuming you would have 30% more health, healing and damage, then left it up to the community to see whether people could beat the encounter with less. 57 guilds in the entire world beat heroic LK on 25-player with the 15% buff or less. Zero 10-player guilds beat heroic LK on 10-player with the 15% buff or less. Six months after the content is released, when we get to 30%, will it really matter how many people get to see it? The majority of the guilds in the world will not beat heroic LK with the 30% buff, nor will they beat it if they decide to come back at level 85. Raiding is only easy if you can’t get to or choose not to do the hard stuff.

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  30. @ Jasyla

    Thanks for clarifying what you were talking about. I wanted to comment on a couple of the ideas.

    – Use of CC or kiting is rarely used in fights, and it could be used a lot more.

    Oddly enough, the fight where CC should be used, ToC’s Faction Champions, is considered one of the toughest. Probably because raiders don’t think they should have to CC.

    – Most classes have damage-reducing abilities, and players can use them as they see fit (although many don’t use them at all). Have fights that require you to use these abilities in order to survive.

    As a resto shaman, I don’t have any survival abilities (unless you count the Nature’s Blessing + Healing Wave emergency heal). It could be inviting trouble if you have a raid mechanic that certain classes can’t get through.

    That said, if Blizzard would give me some kind of survival ability, I would be all for adding something like this. I agree that dps should be required to make judicious use of damage-reducing abilities for raids, rather than just point the finger at heals every time they die.

    – When poisons or curses are used, you could have a limited amount of time to cleanse them before they leave a non-cleansable debuff on people. Healers would have decide who gets cleansed and who doesn’t.

    This one both excites and terrifies me. As a healer, I like the idea of having to make that decision, but I’m scared of all the dps complaints that would come from it.

    – Have bosses with resistances that change (eg. Chromaggus) so people need to change up their spell usage

    I love this idea! I remember some mob in Burning Crusade (Netherstorm, I think) that became resistant to the first type of damage done to it. Sucks for paladins since they only have Holy magic, but it would keep things interesting.

    The nice thing about some of these ideas is that it could force each raid to change tactics, depending on what characters/abilities they had access to, rather than using a cookie-cutter set of tactics from some Web site.
    .-= timejumper´s last blog ..Sindragosa fight shows promise =-.

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  31. Chromagnus was actually one of the ones I was thinking of pointing out to Timejumper. Nef as well — BWL was, in my opinion, one of the best raids ever put together by Blizz… and then they followed it up with Naxx, and that was the beginning of “play the safety dance, not your class.”

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  32. – Use of CC or kiting is rarely used in fights, and it could be used a lot more.
    – You could have certain abilities or debuffs that were more effective on some types of enemies than others.

    Translation: Screwing classes out of raid spots because they don’t have reliable CC/kiting ability/any of your proposed “special abilities or debuffs”.

    Yes, that’s magnificent raid design right there. /eyeroll
    .-= Rilgon Arcsinh´s last blog ..Ready, Steady, Go! =-.

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  33. Bad memories of getting sat out of raids?

    Generally, when CC or kiting is used in a fight not every single raider is expected to do it. People are still needed to put out high damage or buffs/debuffs even if they con’t contribute to CC.
    .-= Jasyla´s last blog ..Shared Topic: Favorites =-.

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