Readability - an ongoing problem

[Juviâ-drakthul]

@Ishayo-tarren-mill

We all used to because it provided readability on how much damage you just took

lol never i look at my hp not random numbers wasting brain power lol.

If i can see brain freeze with my ui everyoen can see fix your interface /show it .

[Ishayo-tarren-mill]

@Juviâ-drakthul

lol never i look at my hp not random numbers wasting brain power lol.

If i can see brain freeze with my ui everyoen can see fix your interface /show it .

I’m not referring to my own brain freeze, and I absolutely guarantee you that you cannot watch out for the brain freezes of arena opponents and party members. At all. Ever. And don’t tell me the solution is weakauras, I will friggin’ slap you.

[Juviâ-drakthul]

why would you care watching it on your teamamtes? ?

[Sigkir-ravencrest]

@Ishayo-tarren-mill

And don’t tell me the solution is weakauras, I will friggin’ slap you.

Use weakauras.

[Ishayo-tarren-mill]

@Juviâ-drakthul

why would you care watching it on your teamamtes? ?

Because him getting one can be enough to enable aggressive play - but nobody ever capitalizes on this because they can’t see it, and when they don’t realize the enemy has it, which they never do, they might just plain die.

@Sigkir-ravencrest

Use weakauras.

[Juviâ-drakthul]

I will show you my full interface in arena : [Preformatted text](https://imgur.com/a/B6Uc1e3)

[Holystyle-drakthul]

@Elahri https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FNYpgd6WB4

And for feral it is blood.

[Ishayo-tarren-mill]

Yeah that’s not gonna detect it.

[Holystyle-drakthul]

ye i only detect stuns/debuffs and such or i see someone with big cd do not look for so mini things .

[Elahri-silvermoon]

@Holystyle-drakthul

@Elahri https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FNYpgd6WB4

And for feral it is blood.

2022 06 07 19 46 11

Yeah, no. There’s nothing like that for me.

[Holystyle-drakthul]

Reset your settings to default ?

[Worgenbrian-turalyon]

i got flagged for nothing,bruh

[Atahalni-argent-dawn (Atahalni)]

@Ishayo-tarren-mill

There is no visual indication that Brain Freeze has procced, and since Brain Freeze can turn Frostbolt into a crit and a crit Frostbolt with Deep Shatter is serious business, the Frostbolt can do anywhere from 5k to 18k and it’s not that easy to tell. Of course you can tell when the frostbolt+flurry strikes but by this point you’ve taken the damage.

In fairness, while I absolutely agree qith this point, there is more at play here. Namely, the fact that an ability can in one instance deal 5k, and in another case 18k or more damage.

Shadowbolt for lock is another great one. On its basic form, it deals a measly 2k ish damage. Less?

But when all stars, legendaries and pvp talents align, it can hit for over 48k damage.

Thats 24x times its normal damage.

The variance is the problem, which results from the fact that classes have been designed since legion in a way that primary abilities and cooldowns cause you to deal way too much damage.

In the past, say, MoP, my slam on my warrior actually dealt a ton of damage. Despite being a filler ability. Hell, it even had a talent that made it deal more damage (trauma). For the past 8 years, its been all but impotent filler that you only ever press not to cap on rage.

Returning to the point, if we take that frostbolt, or that shadowbolt and instead increased their baseline damage to, say, 8 to 10k, and reduced the highest damage with all cooldowns and procs aligned to something like 17k. That’d mean that the abilities, on their own, actually feel exciting and good to press all the time rather than 20% of the time when your class has its cooldowns up. At the same time, that damage is now more readable and reactable, because ylu know you need to respect even those baseline abilities, but on the other hand they will not randomly take away 80% of your health in one hit.

[Ixyion-blackhand]

Great Post and and a lot it legitimate points.
Hope this thread goes up…

[Izyla-ravencrest (Izyla)]

@Elahri-silvermoon

@Holystyle-drakthul

@Elahri https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FNYpgd6WB4

And for feral it is blood.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M93MqgcPmbI

Yeah, no. There’s nothing like that for me.

You’re using Celestial Alignment, he’s using Incarnation. They’re 2 different abilities, incarnation has a much bigger visual, CA doesn’t have any afaik

@Elahri-silvermoon

It’s not a latency issue. It’s how they’ve built the game. It’s intended functionality.

I wouldn’t say they’re doing a good job at it when you think you’re out of it and still get hit by it and that’s an intended function.

It’s just the way the game is designed, the game registers your position when a cast finishes, not when the animation lands. It works both ways because you can also move back inside a mechanic after the cast finishes and not get hit. Personally I think boss mechanic readability is better if only because everything is so telegraphed tbh. But I think this topic is more in regards to player abilities, not raid mechanics necessarily.

[Ishayo-tarren-mill]

@Atahalni-argent-dawn

In fairness, while I absolutely agree qith this point, there is more at play here. Namely, the fact that an ability can in one instance deal 5k, and in another case 18k or more damage.

That is the point. There are a few hidden effects that make this happen and because they’re hidden it causes confusion.

@Atahalni-argent-dawn

The variance is the problem, which results from the fact that classes have been designed since legion in a way that primary abilities and cooldowns cause you to deal way too much damage.

Absolutely. This is a very important point, but let’s not ignore the fact that many of these starts that have to align are invisible, hard to spot, and in some cases even hard to work out where they come from, and this is a huge part of the problem.

@Atahalni-argent-dawn

Returning to the point, if we take that frostbolt, or that shadowbolt and instead increased their baseline damage to, say, 8 to 10k, and reduced the highest damage with all cooldowns and procs aligned to something like 17k. That’d mean that the abilities, on their own, actually feel exciting and good to press all the time rather than 20% of the time when your class has its cooldowns up. At the same time, that damage is now more readable and reactable, because ylu know you need to respect even those baseline abilities, but on the other hand they will not randomly take away 80% of your health in one hit.

Yeah, this is something I really strongly agree with and I’ve made this point in the past as well. And SkillCapped made it recently as well. Have a like for that one.

Part of the issue of readability is that it’s the same spell that either does nothing or pops off to insane amounts depending on many contexts and multipliers, and some of them are really hard to notice, meaning you can get randomly globalled and just be like: “… what?”

[Atahalni-argent-dawn (Atahalni)]

Absolutely, yeah.

I don’t exactly know what started this seemingly conscious - Or either blatantly ignorant way of game design. And its not like Blizzard has been unaware of the problem either!

Ion Hazzikostas has complained about the difficulty of designing encounters because of addons since Legion- Saying it is an ongoing armsrace.

Which would suggest it is blatant ignorance or lack of understanding, because the obvious solution to all these problems would be to make abilities more readable and reactable. That way nobody will need those addons.

I don’t know, the whole game design since Legion just has felt extremely uninspired, aimless and blatantly uncaring at times. Whether it is some classes going without any adjustments for entire patches.

It feels to me like they will pull any other project out of their behinds than actually discuss game design especially in regards to class and encounter design, because it feels like a taboo to them.