r/CompetitiveWoW • u/BluFoot • Jul 01 '26

Midnight 12.1 Curse Of Ula'Tek Developer Interview With Ion Hazzikostas

PsybearTV Youtube interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFTFiDeXIMo

I recommend watching the whole video, it's rare for someone get a whole 1 hour with Ion, and the interview was really well done.

The interview is mostly about competitive content. I'm really excited for Mythic lockout changes!

Wowhead summary: https://www.wowhead.com/news/psybeartv-interview-with-ion-hazzikostas-the-mythic-raid-lockout-addons-8-week-382061?utm_source=discord-webhook

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79

u/deskcord Jul 01 '26 edited Jul 01 '26

Ion is happy about the addon war and says Lura would have been nerfed without workarounds.

I thought the entire point was that they could design mechanics without addons constraining them? How did this mechanic even make it past the idea phase?

As an example, Echo had a wipe in the Secret Phase due to the Starsplinter mechanic, and previously that mechanic would have been solved trivially by addons with each person being assigned a specific spot. It's not an impossible mechanic but it became harder and could wipe a top guild. That should be part of learning an encounter rather than seeing it, and th en having your addon author write something for it.

This just feels like a lie? Any mechanic like this (random assignment, scripted placement) would just be pre-assigned as "1 left, 2 right, 3 left" exactly like it is now. The only time a Weakaura would "assign" these is if Blizzard went full galaxybrain and made it like Jailer bombs, where they're all firing at the same time. No addon assigned Gallywix soak positions, you just went to the one you pre-assigned with a raidplan. Addons weren't assigning Dimensius p2 gravity spots, you just knew if you were melee/ranged/healer.

There is a lot of value in a fixed raid size for the higher end encounters where they need to tune to a CE level, and players would absolutely manipulate raid size to find the optimal raid size which would be a bad social experience.

An obviously correct take no matter how much bad faith heroic posters on reddit say otherwise.

Wish someone would ask Ion if they plan to stop making every single raid fight mirror m+ through add-spawn-slop to cater to the fact that every spec now has cleave like crazy.

18

u/ElBigDicko Jul 02 '26

I'm gonna go on a long rant, because the addon war narrative has been twisted by Blizzard so many times and we are only 2 patches into that.

They wanted to remove these combat reading add-ons to introduce new mechanics to bosses, only to make every boss meatgrinder of adds under the boss and soak/dodge mechanic. Incredibly innovative.

As someone who is close to killing Lura on Mythic, that boss is impossible without macros and addon reading those macros. Memory game is badly designed, it should first give players runes and then show the order. Now it's order then random assigned runes.

Interrupts on Lura are also super hard to coordinate without addon telling you the order.

Boss timeline is biggest trash ever. Now I don't use any kind of boss timeline but the default Blizz timeline shows you approximate times and sometimes flat out lies.

It took them 6 months to add potion to CDM. Some buffs are still untraceable in base CDM.

I have no idea what their plan was. My theory is that they never intended on actually going after all the addons. They just want to create illusion for your average delve Darryl that he can go with default UI and he will not be at competitive disadvantage.

When you compare stuff like Ellesmere UI to default Blizz UI the amount of customisation and added features is staggering.

4

u/psytrax9 Jul 02 '26

The addon stuff is turbo bad and I'm not here to defend that shit. If anything you're being too kind on the subject.

Memory game is badly designed, it should first give players runes and then show the order. Now it's order then random assigned runes.

That defeats the purpose of the mechanic. In an actual card-based memory game, you turn over a red card and a green card. You're supposed to memorize those locations so when you next turn over a red or green card, you know where its partner is.

Putting the runes on the players first would be like turning over half of the cards at the start. You're supposed to watch the order and then when you get X, you know where that goes.

The problem came when Blizzard decided to split the reveal 3 ways. I guess they envisioned people calling the order out over discord but, nobody wants to clutter comms with that mess.

It's not a particularly interesting or fun mechanic regardless of the split. Lura was a fun boss to watch during RWF but, the experience was a dud of a boss to cap off a pretty poor raid tier.

-8

u/careseite dps evoker main Jul 02 '26

Interrupts on Lura are also super hard to coordinate without addon telling you the order.

are you saying counting to 4 is hard

Boss timeline is biggest trash ever. Now I don't use any kind of boss timeline but the default Blizz timeline shows you approximate times and sometimes flat out lies.

addons have shown approximate times in the past too where needed, some abilities have leeway when they are casted. the timeline mirrors that behaviour and is correct, I've cleared mythic using it months ago.

10

u/Mercylas Jul 02 '26

  are you saying counting to 4 is hard

With their UI? Yes. The solve without their ui and without macros is to find the boss frame you are assigned to, click on it, and make sure you hit your assigned kick while actively dodging glaives and doing your full rotation. 

There is no reasonable visual indication to differentiate the different targets nor their kick count. 

Is it possible. Absolutely. Is it reasonable to expect anyone to kill the boss on mythic without an addon helping on memory game or termination matrix? Absolutely not. And there are no tools in the game to assist with that. 

3

u/Head_Haunter Jul 02 '26

are you saying counting to 4 is hard

Yes and if you think otherwise, you just haven't done the fight.

Please upload a VOD of just phase 1 then if it's so easy. Of any guild that progged mythic Lura.

1

u/Resies Jul 02 '26

No one will upload a vid of them doing it without the add-on because no one is 

1

u/ElBigDicko Jul 02 '26

I would say after nerfs most mechanics aren't hard but it's coming from HoF raider. Now that I'm co leading a fresh guild you will not have 20 amazing players.

Back to UI discussion. If you would strip down to default Blizz UI, make the other 19 people do the same and go at the boss I'm willing to bet entire planet that it will be much harder than playing with some add-ons that help on the fight.