What are you talking about? All the screen clutter exists, because the game developpers are assuming we use addons when creating the dungeons, etc. If they assumed and tested without it, they would have to make sure the visual clarity is on-point.
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It is on point. The main problem is that there’s so many things you have to pay attention to that even if they are all visible, your body has a definitive capacity to monitor them all. That’s there addons come in hand, and that’s what their main purpose is - not to make your char overpowered or smth (lol what kind of reasoning it even is?) but to ease your brain’s work. Again, people are unable to JUST KICK ONE cast WITH addons. They can’t see A GIANT CASTING BAR over the mob’s head. Now imagine the same situation WITHOUT addons
first they need to design the game in such a way that addons arent near mandatory.
using PvP as an example, 10 years ago you didn’t really need many addons because the only thing that you needed to track was DRs. weren’t that many cooldowns to speak of and if there were, you could easier track them in your head.
nowadays, everyone has 10 different cooldowns and if you don’t see the ret paladin popping wings and react within 0.5 seconds your health bar drops 80% in 1 global and it’s gg.
game is simply in a state atm where you are almost required to have addons, rather than people just using addons because “everyone else does”
You only needed 1 button to hit with 1 hand while eating pasta with the other one. Perfectly balanced design I suppose
well for PvP i was more thinking the wotlk-cata periods, so this wasn’t really the case back then, but for PvE sure.
but the core thing is, the game moved from a state of all abilities doing damage, every class having 1-2 defensives, some having 0 actual damage cooldowns
to now having 3-4 different offensive cds, 3-4 different defensive cds, and classes doing very little dmg outside of CD windows and then capable of killing you 100-0 in 2 seconds during cds.
Yeah, that’s how MMO classes evolved: some specs are good at tunneling, some are more burst-oriented, and everyone has a wide range of different abilities. That’s what gives the game dynamics and variability (but sometimes there’s just too many of them, hello elemental shamans in pvp 
)
ya but the difference is that almost every single spec evolved like this.
like back in the day you had dot specs doing high sustain and no burst, you had rogues doing high burst and lower sustain
now for the past several years you’ve had even dot specs revolving around stacking 2-3 minute cooldowns for burst windows and doing negligible damage outside of it and the burst classes are suddenly doing similar sustain as others too lol
I don’t play at high raitings and don’t now the situation there, but at a lower raitings (~1600-1800) it is what it is: bursting paladins and rogues that do literally nothing once they are spent and wait for their CDs to come around; pretty decent sustainable DoT classes that slowly yet steadily melt your team down; short-burst window classes like fdk that ‘pulse’ once in a while and then just kiss you gently on the forehead, etc.
Anyways, if speaking about PvP in WoW, one must admit that it is (and has always been) broken to some extent, be it damage, healing or CC problem. This game is just not about killing each other
The whole premise of PvP is to put everyone on an equal field. Ofcourse in an MMORPG, gear and skills help too. But I am against addons. I never use them. If you need addons to track everything, you’re given a massive advantage.
In PvE, we come to a point where Blizzard has to design raids around them. It’s quite silly.
Just yesterday in my raid I had a person that used weakauras while also being in the ingame voice chat. Sometimes when she spoke I could hear one of her weak auras doing this sound 3 times in quick row when Dathea in Vault of Incarnates did cast her cyclone or so…
I even heard there are actual voice lines in that addon telling you commands to follow in encounters.
It is really a shame people need to rely on that due to encounter design and bad telegraphing. But recently Blizzard has done a few tweaks to make enemy casts better readable, so we might get there.
Edit: That being said, a good game doesn’t need addons to make the game totally readable for players. If your game RELIES on addons to work for most players, that only tells you your game is bad designed.
They would absolutely need to make some things baseline first, e.g. BattleGroundEnemies for (r)bgs.
Addons for pve are still not bad. Bosses themselves signal their attack. They’re screaming what are they going to do now. But in pvp it’s a different matter. In pvp addons are downright legal cheating. There is so much going on on the screen that the game without addons is almost impossible. The fact that you can see how much the opponent will have to interrupt the cast is a huge advantage. New players who enter pvp without addons are victims there and don’t even know what addons or auras they need.
So, is it the only reason people consider pvp addons to be pure evil? Cuz they…errrr…don’t know what to install…?
We might get these options, the ui already is more editable wich was something you would normally need an add on for. And i think they said there would be more ui changes coming. So perhaps they are adopting some more functions add ons normally would do
An addon that measures your opponent’s cooldown time? Do you think it’s ok? It’s like having your opponent’s pov open on the second screen. The game should provide equal gameplay itself, not force players to download tons of addons to play on equal terms. Other mmo players make fun of wow players that addons tell you everything to do. You’re like a monkey that takes commands. And they’re quite right about that.
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Yes, that completely okay cuz that’s how wow’s pvp system works - you either know then to expect a burst or you don’t, and cry about this world being unfair. And I definitely don’t care what other players say about me. If you do, well, I’ve got some bad news for you
How you even supposed to play this game? You cheat in WoW PvP with addons and you cheat by playing… As I know, russians are banned from Bnet games.
The only reasonable answer to this is 
And I cheat by breathing air. As I know, Russians breathe air
Somehow other games don’t need a ton of beeps, icons, and counters. I play pvp in wow and I like it. But I also understand players who are new and don’t even realize how much they don’t own and are behind. And the game itself does not give them any help.
The fact that the whole game client is built to rely on a publicly distributed combat log to display animations and effects. And there’s no way to limit what addons can see without doing a major overhaul to the game’s core.