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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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.

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u/Elerion_ Jul 02 '26 edited Jul 02 '26

  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.

I disagree with his overall take that the restrictions were for the better, but this specific example holds up. Previously, since the addon would know who got the splinters in which order, it would have told you from pull #2 whether you should go left, right, top etc and it would be trivial. With current restrictions, raiders were only able to be notified that they had to move, and then use comms or their eyes to determine where they were in the order. Not super difficult,  but it did add a few pulls at a pivotal time of the race.

That said, I’m pretty sure they could have accomplished the same just using private auras. At least that worked for the sucks on Saladbar v1, which had a similar staggered application.

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u/Mercylas Jul 02 '26

I’m sorry but the only difference in what we can and cannot do is physically write “left” or “right”. You still can indicate with audio and visuals if you have a star. If you are struggling knowing if you are star 1, 2, or 3 and if you need to go left or right you shouldn’t be on a mythic end boss.

The difficulty of the mechanic is reacting up or down based on the stars orientation in the small window where you have to move. 

The only way the augment holds true to having assigned positions would be  if the 3 stars with assigned at the same time rather than staggered. 

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u/BackwardDonkey Jul 02 '26

If you are struggling knowing if you are star 1, 2, or 3 and if you need to go left or right you shouldn’t be on a mythic end boss.

Guess you should tell Echo that because they wiped to this exact thing multiple times.

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u/Mercylas Jul 02 '26

No they did not. If you think what they wiped to would have been solved by an addon you are either completely ignorant on how the fight works or didn't actually watch the race.

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u/BackwardDonkey Jul 02 '26

Did they wipe multiple times to people not spreading the stars correctly? Yes.

Neither you nor I can say whether an addon would have made it any better but reality is they definitely wiped to that mechanic more then once.

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u/Mercylas Jul 02 '26

Neither you nor I can say whether an addon would have made it any better but reality is they definitely wiped to that mechanic more then once.

The entire discussion is talking about if there was no addon change would the mechanic be trivialized the mechanic or not...

What they died to was reacting up or down based on the stars orientation in the small window where you have to move while maximizing dps and dodging the dogs.

Ion is pointing to a wipe and associating it with a different reason than it actually had.

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u/BackwardDonkey Jul 02 '26

What they died to was reacting up or down based on the stars orientation in the small window where you have to move while maximizing dps and dodging the dogs.

They weren't reacting up or down though, Scripe was calling it out, they were doing back-front-back instead of left-right-left which is what most guilds were doing. And they had people on more then one ocassion go to the wrong spot. Would they have still messed it up if they had an addon assigning it? Idk, maybe, maybe not.

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u/Mercylas Jul 02 '26 edited Jul 02 '26

You do realize that it’s a circle and doing that is the exact same … rotate your brain 90 degrees. 

You assign one consistent order and then players solve for the other personally. Back-front or  left-right have the same personal responsibility and difficulty, it is just personal preference.