I see a lot of chatter around debuff filtering and buff filtering right now because of the new UI and class changes. I want to leave a short message on this whole subject.
A buff or debuff is a temporary effect that affects a player, and they are displayed on our screens because they have a meaningful impact on our character’s performance that we can control or exploit.
A buff is therefore not:
- An event promotion that affects all players
- A temporary effect the player should never care about in their gameplay (those should not exist)
- Multiple icons representing the same thing
Beyond the raid buffs, which should have their own row or frame as they had in WotLK, the amount of buffs that apply to a player should generally be hovering somewhere around maximum a handful.
If this is not the case, people will need to filter because they can’t see what’s going on, and then they think the problem is the UI. The problem is not the UI, the problem is that there are a bunch of spell effects that don’t do anything or apply with the same duration as another one.
Stop littering my screen. We shouldn’t need addons to clean this up - it should just be clean and clear what’s affecting my character.
Buffs that should be filtered should not be there - and now that the ball is finally in Blizzard’s court instead of addon developers making a hundred bandaids - it’s time.