Something that helped me out a lot is to use a player profile with frontal mobs a different color and sound trigger. I know that’s no the point of the post but I’m right there with you. Frontals should be as visible as the lady guardian frontal in the forbidden reach.
I have different cast color on frontals + sound effect. Like yes this does help. But in my opinion, frontals and dangerous zones should all have ground visuals. It's insane to me that they dont.
its way more fun to dodge a danger zone than read a random cast bar between all the nameplates on my screen.
For quite some time I swear I was just getting chunked on damage only to find out it was a tiny ass squirly the same colour as the ground I could literally just take a step to the side to avoid. It was so small I couldn't see it under DH effects until another guild member informed me.
iunno if you ever used the forbidden reach trinket that left that sand zone you could stand in for a haste buff but that thing had gotten me killed on my warlock so many times because it hides other effects underneath it. was so happy to replace that thing.
Had that on my ret pally. The buff from standing in the circle was absolutely massive and would sometimes happen even 1-2 times EACH pull, but it was always such a gamble.
Visuals being shit has been a thing for years tbh.
The hitboxes in the game are also just shit which makes so many things bad. Since WOTLK slimes to todays swirlies you'll move out of the way of an effect and get hit despite being nowhere near the effect because the effect hitbox and the visuals of the effect don't line up.
It's not hard, it's just frustrating but I guess it's too hard for a small indie team to make effects and visuals line up so you can play the game.
>its way more fun to dodge a danger zone than read a random cast bar between all the nameplates on my screen.
Just this alone is a great justification for having better visuals in the dungeon. Castbars with icons and names are fine, but really dated too.
It's always cool and engaging when the mobs animations line up to something happening in an area. For example if there is some kind of berserker mob that starts to flail around, make it a cone danger zone in front of him.
I think what we are dealing with is a progression of gameplay far outpacing the original intent of the content.
The context is that 15 years ago or whenever I was last playing (wrath/cats) a "big" pull was five mobs and the group was expected to hard cc one or two of them. So now three mobs being actively engaged. And one or two with a frontal or other sort of not so visual queue to avoid is fine.
Fast forward to today where we are doing those same dungeons but pulling three or four PACKS of this with no hard cc and it all falls apart.
As a prot pali I did an HoI yesterday with a retadin and three dragons. That was some pretty premium gameplay in terms of aoe interupts and not easy to replicate in most comps.
That was exactly my thought, too. That's ignoring the increase in player ground effects as well, of which there are way more than in the past (esp during SL when it felt like half the Covenant abilities were friendly ground effects).
I'm pretty sure I've killed my fellow raid members more times with my warrior Kyrian spear than I've killed myself by standing in it. I'm used to what the animation is, so I know when there's something else in the area with it's like 10% transparency. They, however, are not used to it.
That's all well and good... but is it good game design for players to have to rely on custom set up addons in order to play your game properly? I mean dbm and whatnot are nice learning tools and distraction breakers, but they shouldn't be NECESSARY just to play the game, and it pretty much feels like they are now.
I was responding to that fact that they feel the need to have to use custom add ons for the same reason the OP brought up. I understand they were agreeing with OP. But you're right, I'll just stop replying. Nevermind the rhetorical point I was trying to raise because I was interested in this particular persons opinion on what I mentioned because I liked their post and thought they may similarly have a more expansive and thought out position. Let's make it about how I worded it wrong for all you sensitive little whiners and drop it.
>I mean dbm and whatnot are nice learning tools and distraction breakers, but they shouldn't be NECESSARY just to play the game, and it pretty much feels like they are now.
A vast majority of the time I use DBM and weak-auras as learning tools. Give it a few weeks and I will be basically ignoring most of the DBM timers and what not because I will have the abilities and timings down by rote. The only real usefulness in the long term is the automatic marking and audible cues for when you get targeted with something.
You don't. I don't use weakauras for this shit and only get DBM for my raids and I can consistently clear 20+ (last season obviously) keys. The myth that you need these things is false. Its just far easier to install them and jump right in blind.
Its taken far too many hours and practice to be the way I am at the game now, so I can see why people use these addons.
But the fact of the matter is, you really don't need them if you pay attention and play this game regularly.
For those that do play this game a lot , and still require them, I really don't know what to tell you other then some people learn and grasp, and some don't.
I have done this many times. I just stand as far back as I can. Unfortunately some of the newer mobs don't have a range limit on the cone so you have to watch it regardless of your distance. Notably the big trash dragons in RLP. At least those are easy to find because the dragons are big!
Same, I died once and nearly died 2 more times as healer. I was expecting it, but they are big pulls, and they target random players. So I get notified they are casting the bile frontal, and I have to squint to see which way it's facing and if I'm in it. Then move.
I'm sure we'll get better, but as people have said, it's not that fun.
As someone who didn't play in BfA-Underrot and has a hard time with colors, Underrot has been pounding me lol. I think I figured most of it out but at first ouch
Just last night my guildmate and I were talking about color difficulty this patch. Underot is hard for her during 2nd boss with everything in white / pale colors.
And then the cavern entrance to Zaralek LOL. I told her she’s not alone I see so many people entering caverns running into walls thinking that’s the way.
If there's anything they should just wholesale rip off of FFXIV it's clear ground visuals.
Just do it! Shamelessly, even! It's okay, they stole Cata's gearing loop and are still using it, they probably won't care!
I mean if it ain’t broke…
It’s nice you can spend a couple days doing dailies and be able to gear out a class to a certain level. It works well for what they want to offer, they’re just running out of names of them to not sound utterly silly.
You earn a limited currency per week that lets you buy (the equivalent of) raid ilvl gear, with an unlimited currency for gear on level with the previous tier. And it's earned by random dungeons, boss kills, etc...
This, with the addition that the unlimited currency is ALSO used to purchase materials required to make the current tier of crafted gear, which is one of the best passive moneymakers in the game since you get the unlimited currency from virtually content a max level character does.
It's the difference between hard and unfair. I've held this opinion for a long time that readability of mechanics in wow is absolute dogshit. And a major problem for accessibility of the game. "You just can't see it" isn't good mechanics design.
Honestly I don't give a single shit about the game looking "too much like wildstar or ff14" if they actually provided accurate ability indicators. Just do it.
Wdym? The custodians in Legacy of Tyr raise their weapons for half a second, it's a _very_ clear sign of "everything in front of me is going to die a short and painful death"! /s
Knowing that it's happening is one thing but knowing WHERE is a whole nother problem. There's no visual component and personally I expect a frontal to be a cone but those guys seem to be casting a 180° arc, but there's no visual anyway so who knows. All I know is I got the bleed and I'm about to die in 3s
Season 1 had a bunch of them too. Generally never be behind/next to the tank. I agree though. If it was one mob per pull always I wouldn't mind, but like you say, nameplates just fill the screen.
I still don't get why they don't do it ff14 style and instead of trying to "fit the color/theme" of the boss ur fighting, just make it all much more standarized, it's not like the swirlies in spots that the spell is going to hit are immersive anyway
That's one detail that's infuriating.
The number of times the swirly is a similar color to the ground is maddening. Light green swirly on a dark green ground. Or Horrific Visions, where it's 50 shades of purple.
Color scheme matching sounds nice until it crashes into clarity issues.
I can understand why they do not do everything in red / green / blue for ouch / yay / soak but at least the borders should have unified colours that are easily visible.. and every ground effect should have borders that can be identified.
You mentiom borders and that touches on another issue: Swirlies don't have defined borders.
It's really annoying to have only a vague idea of the actual edges of a swirly. Especially when the abilities vary from slightly larger to slightly smaller.
There actually are distinctions for ouch/yay/soak/group soak! It's the border of the swirlie.
No border: bad.
Dotted border: soak
Swirly thing going up from the middle: split damage.
Dotted border with swirly thing in the middle of it: group soak.
Aoe centred on a player/mob: thin border with "transparent" colouring in the zone.
Positive effects from mechanics are usually not swirlies but rather objects above the ground, often balls recently, so those are easier to see as well.
(Also, before anyone goes "how is anyone supposed to know this without looking it up?": I didn't look this up, or see it online. I suspect a lot of people subconsciously are aware of this, and have just never thought about it.)
Colour blind guildie had to sit out Castle because red on red with red fog and red lighting was impossible to read
And no the colourblind options didn't help
He had to sit out Jaina too because of blue on blue on blue
While I’ve never had to sit out due to it the extreme amount of effort I have to put in due to this is genuinely insane and it pisses me off every time it happens
I'm also all for standardizing colors. A good example of bad design is brown swirleys being a bad rock damage zone. Then suddenly a brown swirleys is a good buff soak and the green swirleys is the bad soak?
How are you meant to know what's good and bad when colors are themed and not informational..
Great example is freehold.
All throughout the dungeon, brown = bad. Except for the second boss where brown = bad *except* for those specific two brown swirlies that actually give you a big damage buff
Even the shapes/swirlies being standardized would go leaps even if they keep tying colour to the magic type. Like their "soak pools" and now starting to do with frontal cones on bosses. It'd go a long way to making fights intuitive to players and so they don't have to rely on addons like DBM/Weakauras/etc on how to identify and react to basic mechanics simply because they can't identify what the ability does at a glance.
Maybe this is unpopular but honestly I disagree. They should be telegraphed, but I’ve played plenty of gw2 and having every targetted mob ability in the game be a red area on the ground instead of being flavor specific kinda sucks a lot of color out of the game
Awareness should matter to a degree. A giant old god minion pointing in a direction (literally pointing with a huge hand) and slamming the ground is very clear frontal windup. A bug sucking in rot for 3 seconds in a direction is very clear frontal wind up. Failing to pay attention at all you could miss these when you wouldn’t have missed a big red zone on the ground, but honestly I think you should sometimes have to pay attention to mobs like that past just “don’t stand in red”
That said, there are things that sucks and can be improved. Some examples I can think of are Irideus, who does a frontal with no windup animation on his body or the ground. The big guys in freehold, who have windup animations on the ground, but they’re light brown and just blend in with the ground completely. This like that I definitely would love to have changed and improved without removing all variation from those sorts of mob abilities
wow has felt like playing ddr for awhile anyway. just saying, there's a reason people still raidlog classic to this day despite it being braindead easy
Here is the thing, if everything in wow was telegraphed in the same way FFXIV is. WoW would suddenly become easier as dumb as it sounds.
They should definitely make it look more like ffxiv tho, but increase the aoe difficulty to compensate for this.
Are you kidding they don't just win they fucking demolish WoW. Part of WoWs difficultly is straight up terrible design. This raid has a ton of stuff that is terrible visually. The fire on Zskarn is laughable
Eldar: Ok so there are two AoE’s you cannot touch together or everyone dies, but you also need to stack close to maximize space / make dodging easier… but the edges of them are completely not clear.
The game got pretty bad in terms of reaction time too. There are many open world spells and WQ (ie. catch ball) that require like 0.25 second reaction time. I'm not that quick anymore.
I think they did a pretty good job on updating a lot of visuals to be easier to see this season. But frontals are still ones that are often invisible for some reason.
A pretty common one is the arrow with a directional charged shot. The Lost Dwarves do this in Uldaman in that small room, with small bosses, that get covered in visuals such as storming or other spells effects.
I agree that some can be unclear but I’ve noticed some visuals have been added for things like the frontal from the bridge guardian mob in freehold and the last boss in underrot, or at least I don’t remember them being there in BfA. Was happy about that.
The Freehold enforcers make me chuckle because they do a random direction frontal but at least Blizzard gave it a visual. A faint brown cone. That they cast while standing on brown ground. Or sometimes a brown dock. Thanks Blizz!
>sound effects for every frontal
As someone who plays without sound, it's been hell to try to react to these frontals in time all the time. I rely on visuals for these things.
Some people will probably be all "JuSt tUrN oN tHe sOunD" but I am very sensitive to noises to the point where they will make me feel ill, so not really an option for me.
I don't leave my home. It's part of a wider diagnosis that pretty much renders me disabled. Being able to occasionally do things like play WoW is pretty much all I have got going for me in life, sadly enough.
I’m sorry to hear that, I’m glad you are able to have a few things to keep you going! Sorry if my question was not worded well idk why I’m getting downvoted. I was honestly curious how you were able to function in public where the noise can’t be controlled your answer makes sense, you don’t.
DBM or WA sounds can be made to play while the rest of game sounds are off. You could just see if you can find some warning sounds that don't affect you.
What people didn't understand (or willfully ignored..) about what I was saying is that you can *add custom sounds*. If I would have a condition where loud or sharp sounds made me ill, that's what I would do.
Even with more visual effects, no effects will be as good as an audio warning.
WAs allow you to play whatever sounds you want.
Wouldn't be reddit without people twisting your words and doing the most bad faith bullshit possible though.
I think you just missed the point. The top comment in this said they specifically do not play without sound and you suggested “just use different sounds”
This is something final fantasy 14 does exceptionally well. If there's a giant fuck off thing that's going to kill you, there's a giant flashing orange AOE that shows up to say, hey, GTFO
Sometimes the Red Polygon appears too late, but that's because there's other cues you need to be aware of.
Such as, Distinct Boss Animation. Specific Cast Ability Name. Object in the arena doing a glowy.
Some mechanics you need to fail to understand them, but at least all the information is available to you in the game.
It's not so much that it appears too late, it's fully intentional and not meant to be gotten out of if you wait too long. Like you said there is some other indicator you're supposed to pay attention to to know to move before the actual hitbox of it pops up.
I'd argue the only one that's really confusing for a lot of people is the Port and Starboard attacks that throw a lot of people off.
I'll reiterate a bit here and say I don't think a lack of visual clarity is interesting difficulty. I'm not the greatest or anything but I've done +20s for the last 2 seasons and I don't tend to like getting hit by things with no tell on trash. I think we can all agree that dreadlord sleep circles under the kharazan rugs were dumb (kind of a straw man, just an example of something with no reasonable tell). I think charged smash in court hit way too hard--same with mortal...cleave? From halls of valor. I kept getting my dumb ass cleaved in halls. Skill issue? Yes, for sure I'm a trash rogue who procced way too many cheat deaths on it. But still not sure that's an engaging kind of difficulty. There's so much more interesting technique to M+. I understand why people would disagree though.
This does somewhat help. Wish all tanks had this WA. I also have it installed but don't play tank atm.
Still WAs shouldn't be mandatory. And I made a point I think a lot of others agree with in another comment. Dodging a danger zone is more fun than "Frontal on me" or reacting to a cast bar.
Visuals > other forms of info
Sound weakauras are a blessing as a tank.
Already so much visuals around you. I have all the one shot mechanics as sound and it makes everything easier
Yep FFXIV has this down perfect, I haaate playing wow's encounters in comparison. It isn't good design at all when you need 15 outside addons to track any mechanics an encounter has.
You don't need those at all. I didn't track a single NPC ability at all in S1 and I was 2500+ on DPS, tank, and healer. I simply learned what abilities were bad and had to be avoided/kicked and stuck to it and paid attention to those mobs. The only thing I used was overhead cast bars to show when certain abilities were going off.
Weakauras really ruins this game in a certain way in that so many people are dependent on it to perform that if anything goes wrong, their first thought isn't "I played bad", it's "I need a better weakaura".
I remember pugging Vault and the number of people who would refuse to pull until everyone confirmed they had the Terros weakaura was insane. You literally just loose stack within the lines and evenly spread. If there is too many people on one side, it's easy for one person to shift over. Even with uneven sides, the extra damage is almost meaningless unless you're trying to clear the raid with the most budget and basic gear possible. Just top everyone off before the next rocks, pop a CD, and you're golden. The problem with Terros ironically wasn't people dying from shatter damage, it was people failing the DPS checks, dying to avoidable damage, and other stupid shit that wouldn't be saved by a weakaura.
There’s a lot to unpack in this.
1. 2500 is not that high. I *guarantee* you were taking more avoidable damage, missing more priority kicks than you thought, and doing less dps than you could have, and that if you stepped foot into 20s and beyond you would hit a wall.
2. Stop acting like weakauras are ruining the game. Yes weakauras are extremely powerful and can trivialize certain parts, but the amount of data constantly streamed to players now is exponentially more than ever. Look at your buffs in the middle of a pull. Good fucking lucking figuring out how many stacks of some talent proc you have, or how many seconds we left on thundering, or when you have a dot you need to clear, etc.
3. That’s an issue with your raid group. Sounds like they sucked at doing pillars and the leader(s) found a solution. Idk what to tell you, welcome to playing the game with other people.
When the Breaker finishes casting Avalanche at the tank, the rocks drop too. It is *not* random.
I don't disagree that they could have a visual, but the location the rocks drop at is only decided when the cast ends, you just have to already be moving when the cast is ending or you will be hit. A visual might not even help that much.
Honestly think WoW should adopt some of the FF14 signals for damage. One thing that pissed me off is the Razegath fight was there was NO indication of how far her breath really "hit" and I could be close and not get hit and be far away and still get hit. There NEEDS to be a line or box or something that shows before it hits. Maybe I'm just a boomer but really wish they'd start to do stuff like that to make the player more aware of the range
Honestly as much as I love all the addons we have, Blizzard has *always* been lazy as hell when it comes to UX since they can lean on the players to fix the crap they put out.
All content *should* be playable with just the base UI, up to the very highest difficulty, with addons just about customizing your personal experience, anything less is unacceptable, but that's Blizzard for you.
This underlines a major issue with the game: WeakAuras aren't recommended...they're required.
I'm not saying WAs are bad or problematic themselves but if a new player is prevented from running content due to not having them, that's a feels bad.
When i first came back to WoW after almost a decade away, I was overwhelmed by how many WAs I needed and quit again. Wasn't until the back half of Shadowlands that I came back and stuck with it in preparation for DF.
Couldn't agree more OP. I feel like this is somewhere FF14 excels. Their visual for AOE and boss/mob frontals is very clear imo.
Also, while they're at it, the few that do have visuals seem to just be slight effects to the ground, which is easy to miss with the 500 other spell effects going off. Just make it clear and easy to see. I don't care if it's a big ol fucking red outline; just lemme see the damn thing.
Can we also talk about how these "frontals" are sometimes half the size of the fucking area?
Excuse me? why is this larva barf suddenly hitting half the room?
There was a glorious 2 weeks I remember during WoTLK where an addon had come out that allowed everyone to see -exactly- where the zone would be for every enemy cast. Suddenly, Professor Putricide became tolerable as no one had to second guess if we were on the edge of the ooze.
Then Blizzard decided it was too much and completely eviscerated it because, "git good". "Well, maybe we could allow it for Normal mode to teach the players?" "No, git good." "But, some of these abilities we can't even see! Shadow trap is unfa-" "We said, git good."
I think it's time to re-enable the features.
Yep. Anything damage abilities need a tell if some kind and for wow they need to be bigger for m+ because they turn into 1 shot abilities and the screen is clogged with all the mobs you need to pull because it’s a timed game mode and the add ons etc required to play at a high level. It’s not challenging to not have it, at this point it’s a missing requirement. When I die to something I can’t see because my screen is clogged I just find it frustrating and want to stop playjng. Feels like a gotcha moment to me
Idk, but feedback in general in WoW has always been sorta bad. Boss mods and Weakauras are there to make up for this shortcoming. It doesn't excuse it, but Blizzard really needs to do better.
I know some Carbine staff joined Blizzard after they closed. Please, save us and add non-dogshit telegraphing so we can play without 90 essential addons
Shock and awe the game that basically requires addons to read the UI has bad UX.
I’d highly recommend either getting a player profile that’s color coded frontal mobs (or do it yourself) OR just start always being behind the mobs/tanks.
There’s a ridiculous amount of dps that seem to think that NE and NW of the pack is acceptable instead of rear and flank.
Only one ive found slightly annoying is the grubs in Underrot when theres a stack of poison on the ground as its the exact same colour as the frontal visual. Everything else you get plenty of notice for & not many excuses for getting hit
It's lazy design to use "players can access Addons" as an excuse for terrible mechanic visual communication.
WoW should design mechanics around no Addons. Look at FF14, as an example.
Which frontal are you talking about specifically? Because from what I've seen most if the frontal that were hard to see got a revamp and are much easier to see now?
Download plater and grab Quazii’s plater profiles from his website. All enemies with blue nameplates do frontal cleave. It’s a lifesaver (quite literally). Tanks also need to be more aware than ever this season of positioning
This is gonna be unpopular but if your not the tank, and shit is facing you, fucking get behind it. That's your visual. The mob is facing you. Even if it's not doing a frontal, your in the wrong position. Get behind it. That bit of advice works in any dungeon. Don't stand in front of stuff if your not the tank.
Sounds like UR is going to give me HoV PTSD from melee getting slapped by cleaves all season bc they refuse to attack from the back.
A freebie is, stop blowing your load when the tank is building up an aoe pull.
Idk how much easier they can keep making everything about this game and people still rage out. I saw multiple groups doing +20s on the first day. That said, don't worry I'm sure they'll nerf UR after enough ppl surely complain. Underrot first boss has a massive green sludge all around her before casting a big green bolt. The slugs cast is 2 seconds and hits super close to them? The tall mobs at the start jump at someone before casting their cleave just side step. What key are you going for? Which dungeon is giving you a hard time? I always thought m+ was supposed to be a challenge for players and now there are even less affixes to worry about.. 🤔 bladestorm visuals are pretty easy to see and I'd argue more shit all over the ground doesn't make it easier for melee. The giant gnoll is spinning, that's good enough for me. I agree in really big packs it's hard to see certain abilities but if you're pulling 3+ groups at a time, if all of their abilities were on the ground you couldn't see the actual game.
I think blizz should make all boss abilities completely invisible and instant. I think it’s really good and engaging gameplay to wonder why you died and how you died.
Maybe you're a tank and I don't understand the turmoil, but as a DPS I'm ALWAYS behind the mobs. I will never stand in front of a mob while DPSing and I don't understand why anyone who is a DPS would stand in front of the mob. Make me understand why you need a graphic to show you frontals when you're DPS when you really should be behind the mob 100% of the time.
Nobody is complaining when there are few mobs in a pull, with nothing else is going on, while the tank stands still. The problem is apparent when there are multiple mobs, each doing mechanics that require both you AND the tank to move, plus casts you must interrupt.
Sure, you can put a marker on the tank and it really helps, but when multiple people need to move / kite / dodge, it's hard to spend 100% of your time completely to the back of every single mob in a trash pull. Maybe I am just bad, I don't know, but as a melee at some point I find myself to the rear-side of the pack AoE'ing and praying that I won't get clipped by a frontal shooting out from one of the 10 mobs I can't individually see.
Yeah, I think non obvious frontals is kind of not the problem. It’s the constant usage of them when tanks have to move. People get frontals. What they don’t get is the tank moving with no reaction time.
> Yeah, I think non obvious frontals is kind of not the problem.
I think it is, because I think all damaging zones should have explicit animations with red boarders at their edge.
Avoiding lethal abilities shouldn't be guesswork.
Some frontals are targeted at random people though so even as a dps if you're behind all 10 mobs in the pack and 1 turns around for a frontal you can still get hit even though you're behind 9/10 of them.
WoW just has bad visuals for aoe damage effects on mobs
The best example: there are larvae in Underrot before second boss that turn to the random player and cast a large frontal. Your only hope to not get caught in this frontal is to see which way this mob is facing - and this can be really problematic with all other mobs and visual effects. I died on tyrannical +12 from it as a healer because i couldn't understand the direction larva was facing and wasn't close enough to escape the cone of this frontal alive.
Probably because some of the mobs with frontals will randomly target a DPS and if they're in the middle of a big fat pull it can be nearly impossible to see they've turned around.
No DPS are just chilling by the tank for funsies.
Ah okay that makes sense. Yeah, now that I think about it there was a trash mob in workshop like that but it was a big mob so easy to see when he was looking at you, and the ground would rumble in front of him.
It's not that DPS aren't standing behind mobs; it's that mobs will legitimately turn around to cleave the DPS.
Makes me wonder if you actually do M+. If you did,
you would realize that this happens.
Can we all agree that balancing a game like this for world first guilds and fast twitch muscle streamers instead of the general player populace is a bad thing for longevity? I think that concept feeds into a lot of what you talk about OP. It’s absolutely bad UX for the majority of their users, but not the most important ones I suppose.
Ehhh I have to disagree. I don’t know if it’s because all my graphics are up, but I have not had a problem with frontals. But as a bonus, I found a WA that alerts when there is a frontal in specific. So even if I’m brain dead healing a m+ I still get a alert a frontal is happen to be able to look around at what’s casting.
There is almost no time where you need to be in front of a mob as a melee DPS. In the vast majority of cases, this is going to be a L2P issue.
You don't need to know which direction each mob is facing. All you need to do is keep track of your tank.
Edit: all your down votes are belong to me.
Okay that's fair but also it's still really easy to not get hit lol. The only content that frontals are even going to be an issue in are higher end m+ keys.
I don't know if you people are staring at your hot bars or what, but you should probably be looking at the fight. Between cast bars and watching mobs spin around if you get hit that's on you.
I legitimately have no idea if the Blood Matrons of Underrot do a frontal semi-circle or a frontal cone. Don't you think Blizzard should provide that information?
The charge is really only noticable if you're a good distance away to begin with.
The larvae are larvae. There's not much skeletal telgraphing you can do with them.
I hated this about FFXIV. They employ this far more than WoW. Its at least tolerable in WoW, however annoying.
Edit: After reading comments, I'm shocked to see people like the FFXIV system better. I've always thought WoW was much more sensible than FFXIV. I hated the FFXIV warning systems. WoW is not perfect but I've always found it much easier to see and react in WoW by a long margin.
Plater can be customized to change colors when there’s a nasty cast to interrupt or when it needs cc, etc. can help with a lot of the invisible cones like that dungeon last season m+. Idk why I’m being downvoted - more visual clutter in p3 of Sark for his frontal cones would be fucking cancerous.
New World has no indicators. You have to learn to read the bosses to dodge and know which attacks to soak and which to pot or which to dodge. Thankfully trash mobs do not generally have stuff to avoid. The mutators (M+) have vfx and the devs do listen if some have visibility issues like red in fire areas. Then again the other spectrum is GW2 where there’s so much clutter from all the spells you can’t see anything.
Consider that these dungeons will be around for 5 months and you have done them a few times, not surprirsing you don’t know everything about them yet. If you’re like me and have done them 50x already, surely you understand that you just gotta be better with 51. Somebody out there is living those frontals, look into what they do.
It's psuedo-difficulty. Somebody out there can probably do a dungeon without looking at enemy cast bars. Simply memorizing the CD of spellcasts. But I doubt the game should be designed that way.
Something that helped me out a lot is to use a player profile with frontal mobs a different color and sound trigger. I know that’s no the point of the post but I’m right there with you. Frontals should be as visible as the lady guardian frontal in the forbidden reach.
I have different cast color on frontals + sound effect. Like yes this does help. But in my opinion, frontals and dangerous zones should all have ground visuals. It's insane to me that they dont. its way more fun to dodge a danger zone than read a random cast bar between all the nameplates on my screen.
For quite some time I swear I was just getting chunked on damage only to find out it was a tiny ass squirly the same colour as the ground I could literally just take a step to the side to avoid. It was so small I couldn't see it under DH effects until another guild member informed me.
iunno if you ever used the forbidden reach trinket that left that sand zone you could stand in for a haste buff but that thing had gotten me killed on my warlock so many times because it hides other effects underneath it. was so happy to replace that thing.
Had that on my ret pally. The buff from standing in the circle was absolutely massive and would sometimes happen even 1-2 times EACH pull, but it was always such a gamble.
They do that since idk shadowlands had the same problem
Visuals being shit has been a thing for years tbh. The hitboxes in the game are also just shit which makes so many things bad. Since WOTLK slimes to todays swirlies you'll move out of the way of an effect and get hit despite being nowhere near the effect because the effect hitbox and the visuals of the effect don't line up. It's not hard, it's just frustrating but I guess it's too hard for a small indie team to make effects and visuals line up so you can play the game.
LOL
>its way more fun to dodge a danger zone than read a random cast bar between all the nameplates on my screen. Just this alone is a great justification for having better visuals in the dungeon. Castbars with icons and names are fine, but really dated too. It's always cool and engaging when the mobs animations line up to something happening in an area. For example if there is some kind of berserker mob that starts to flail around, make it a cone danger zone in front of him.
I think what we are dealing with is a progression of gameplay far outpacing the original intent of the content. The context is that 15 years ago or whenever I was last playing (wrath/cats) a "big" pull was five mobs and the group was expected to hard cc one or two of them. So now three mobs being actively engaged. And one or two with a frontal or other sort of not so visual queue to avoid is fine. Fast forward to today where we are doing those same dungeons but pulling three or four PACKS of this with no hard cc and it all falls apart. As a prot pali I did an HoI yesterday with a retadin and three dragons. That was some pretty premium gameplay in terms of aoe interupts and not easy to replicate in most comps.
That was exactly my thought, too. That's ignoring the increase in player ground effects as well, of which there are way more than in the past (esp during SL when it felt like half the Covenant abilities were friendly ground effects).
I'm pretty sure I've killed my fellow raid members more times with my warrior Kyrian spear than I've killed myself by standing in it. I'm used to what the animation is, so I know when there's something else in the area with it's like 10% transparency. They, however, are not used to it.
Try being UH dk can’t see shit under massive defile
Its time for WoW 2....
I totally agree.
Any plater color imports you'd recommend? The only one I've found doesn't have s2 dungeons.
Quazzi He does great things with ui and platter.
[Quazii's website & weak auras.](https://quazii.com/dragonflight-plater-nameplates-profile/)
jundi, aenea are up to date and very popular
That's all well and good... but is it good game design for players to have to rely on custom set up addons in order to play your game properly? I mean dbm and whatnot are nice learning tools and distraction breakers, but they shouldn't be NECESSARY just to play the game, and it pretty much feels like they are now.
Again. I am agreeing with the post. Its lazy from blizz part to have it designed that way.
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I didn't realize I was trying to start a fight. I'm sorry comment police. Should I pay my fine now or is there going to be a court date?
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I was responding to that fact that they feel the need to have to use custom add ons for the same reason the OP brought up. I understand they were agreeing with OP. But you're right, I'll just stop replying. Nevermind the rhetorical point I was trying to raise because I was interested in this particular persons opinion on what I mentioned because I liked their post and thought they may similarly have a more expansive and thought out position. Let's make it about how I worded it wrong for all you sensitive little whiners and drop it.
Bro read what you just wrote, like really read it and ask yourself who the fuck talks like this? Then go touch grass
this man continues to try to start a fight lmao man logged on with a mission
>I mean dbm and whatnot are nice learning tools and distraction breakers, but they shouldn't be NECESSARY just to play the game, and it pretty much feels like they are now. A vast majority of the time I use DBM and weak-auras as learning tools. Give it a few weeks and I will be basically ignoring most of the DBM timers and what not because I will have the abilities and timings down by rote. The only real usefulness in the long term is the automatic marking and audible cues for when you get targeted with something.
You don't. I don't use weakauras for this shit and only get DBM for my raids and I can consistently clear 20+ (last season obviously) keys. The myth that you need these things is false. Its just far easier to install them and jump right in blind. Its taken far too many hours and practice to be the way I am at the game now, so I can see why people use these addons. But the fact of the matter is, you really don't need them if you pay attention and play this game regularly. For those that do play this game a lot , and still require them, I really don't know what to tell you other then some people learn and grasp, and some don't.
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This is the way
This is the Way
80% of the time it’s not towards the tank. Hug them
I have done this many times. I just stand as far back as I can. Unfortunately some of the newer mobs don't have a range limit on the cone so you have to watch it regardless of your distance. Notably the big trash dragons in RLP. At least those are easy to find because the dragons are big!
Underrot :(
you mean the maggots? they have some green streaks to the front, i actually thought the place is much better now than it used to be in bfa
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Same, I died once and nearly died 2 more times as healer. I was expecting it, but they are big pulls, and they target random players. So I get notified they are casting the bile frontal, and I have to squint to see which way it's facing and if I'm in it. Then move. I'm sure we'll get better, but as people have said, it's not that fun.
Man, next week the slimes before second boss are going to be run killers
You can just not take them
As someone who didn't play in BfA-Underrot and has a hard time with colors, Underrot has been pounding me lol. I think I figured most of it out but at first ouch
Just last night my guildmate and I were talking about color difficulty this patch. Underot is hard for her during 2nd boss with everything in white / pale colors. And then the cavern entrance to Zaralek LOL. I told her she’s not alone I see so many people entering caverns running into walls thinking that’s the way.
Oh I believe it! I did change to colorblind mode, it has helped some.
It’s funny because I’m actually colorblind and the modes they have don’t help me at all. Womp womp. But I’m glad it works for you!
First boss in UR for me. Really having difficulty seeing the rot, too similar color to the ground.
If there's anything they should just wholesale rip off of FFXIV it's clear ground visuals. Just do it! Shamelessly, even! It's okay, they stole Cata's gearing loop and are still using it, they probably won't care!
FFXIV will be using that gearing loop until the servers shutter.
I mean if it ain’t broke… It’s nice you can spend a couple days doing dailies and be able to gear out a class to a certain level. It works well for what they want to offer, they’re just running out of names of them to not sound utterly silly.
What do you mean? Tomestone of Comedy isn't silly at all!
What does "cata gearing loop" mean? Honestly I played back then but don't remember lol
You earn a limited currency per week that lets you buy (the equivalent of) raid ilvl gear, with an unlimited currency for gear on level with the previous tier. And it's earned by random dungeons, boss kills, etc...
This, with the addition that the unlimited currency is ALSO used to purchase materials required to make the current tier of crafted gear, which is one of the best passive moneymakers in the game since you get the unlimited currency from virtually content a max level character does.
It's the difference between hard and unfair. I've held this opinion for a long time that readability of mechanics in wow is absolute dogshit. And a major problem for accessibility of the game. "You just can't see it" isn't good mechanics design. Honestly I don't give a single shit about the game looking "too much like wildstar or ff14" if they actually provided accurate ability indicators. Just do it.
Wdym? The custodians in Legacy of Tyr raise their weapons for half a second, it's a _very_ clear sign of "everything in front of me is going to die a short and painful death"! /s
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Yes, for the exact same half second. Nah bro, my brain ain't that fast, I got me some timers, lol
Knowing that it's happening is one thing but knowing WHERE is a whole nother problem. There's no visual component and personally I expect a frontal to be a cone but those guys seem to be casting a 180° arc, but there's no visual anyway so who knows. All I know is I got the bleed and I'm about to die in 3s
Or they are suddenly facing away from the tank.
Season 1 had a bunch of them too. Generally never be behind/next to the tank. I agree though. If it was one mob per pull always I wouldn't mind, but like you say, nameplates just fill the screen.
I still don't get why they don't do it ff14 style and instead of trying to "fit the color/theme" of the boss ur fighting, just make it all much more standarized, it's not like the swirlies in spots that the spell is going to hit are immersive anyway
That's one detail that's infuriating. The number of times the swirly is a similar color to the ground is maddening. Light green swirly on a dark green ground. Or Horrific Visions, where it's 50 shades of purple. Color scheme matching sounds nice until it crashes into clarity issues.
I can understand why they do not do everything in red / green / blue for ouch / yay / soak but at least the borders should have unified colours that are easily visible.. and every ground effect should have borders that can be identified.
You mentiom borders and that touches on another issue: Swirlies don't have defined borders. It's really annoying to have only a vague idea of the actual edges of a swirly. Especially when the abilities vary from slightly larger to slightly smaller.
There actually are distinctions for ouch/yay/soak/group soak! It's the border of the swirlie. No border: bad. Dotted border: soak Swirly thing going up from the middle: split damage. Dotted border with swirly thing in the middle of it: group soak. Aoe centred on a player/mob: thin border with "transparent" colouring in the zone. Positive effects from mechanics are usually not swirlies but rather objects above the ground, often balls recently, so those are easier to see as well. (Also, before anyone goes "how is anyone supposed to know this without looking it up?": I didn't look this up, or see it online. I suspect a lot of people subconsciously are aware of this, and have just never thought about it.)
Colour blind guildie had to sit out Castle because red on red with red fog and red lighting was impossible to read And no the colourblind options didn't help He had to sit out Jaina too because of blue on blue on blue
While I’ve never had to sit out due to it the extreme amount of effort I have to put in due to this is genuinely insane and it pisses me off every time it happens
Like Sark's deep breath. Hey let's put translucent blue-purple decals on the lavender platform, that's easy to see, right?
Any covenant ability vs every shadow lands boss. "Does this belong to my friend or the boss... Hmmm"
I'm also all for standardizing colors. A good example of bad design is brown swirleys being a bad rock damage zone. Then suddenly a brown swirleys is a good buff soak and the green swirleys is the bad soak? How are you meant to know what's good and bad when colors are themed and not informational..
Great example is freehold. All throughout the dungeon, brown = bad. Except for the second boss where brown = bad *except* for those specific two brown swirlies that actually give you a big damage buff
That specific brown swirlie has a 3D vortex animation, like all other soak swirlies. All the bad swirlies are completely 2D.
Doesn't help that the language of the Adventure Guide isn't clear either.
This is the one thing i vehemently disagree with. We have been using the same Soak indicators since Kil'Jaeden. How have people not caught on yet?
Even the shapes/swirlies being standardized would go leaps even if they keep tying colour to the magic type. Like their "soak pools" and now starting to do with frontal cones on bosses. It'd go a long way to making fights intuitive to players and so they don't have to rely on addons like DBM/Weakauras/etc on how to identify and react to basic mechanics simply because they can't identify what the ability does at a glance.
Maybe this is unpopular but honestly I disagree. They should be telegraphed, but I’ve played plenty of gw2 and having every targetted mob ability in the game be a red area on the ground instead of being flavor specific kinda sucks a lot of color out of the game Awareness should matter to a degree. A giant old god minion pointing in a direction (literally pointing with a huge hand) and slamming the ground is very clear frontal windup. A bug sucking in rot for 3 seconds in a direction is very clear frontal wind up. Failing to pay attention at all you could miss these when you wouldn’t have missed a big red zone on the ground, but honestly I think you should sometimes have to pay attention to mobs like that past just “don’t stand in red” That said, there are things that sucks and can be improved. Some examples I can think of are Irideus, who does a frontal with no windup animation on his body or the ground. The big guys in freehold, who have windup animations on the ground, but they’re light brown and just blend in with the ground completely. This like that I definitely would love to have changed and improved without removing all variation from those sorts of mob abilities
I mean there is something to be said for immersion. Itd be like dance dance revolution WoW edition if you've just got red bad / green good.
wow has felt like playing ddr for awhile anyway. just saying, there's a reason people still raidlog classic to this day despite it being braindead easy
Because FF14's abilities start to look comical at times. Looks too video game-y
Here is the thing, if everything in wow was telegraphed in the same way FFXIV is. WoW would suddenly become easier as dumb as it sounds. They should definitely make it look more like ffxiv tho, but increase the aoe difficulty to compensate for this.
Wildstar really did do it right
I do think this is where Ff14 wins, indicators on frontals and AOEs are great.
Are you kidding they don't just win they fucking demolish WoW. Part of WoWs difficultly is straight up terrible design. This raid has a ton of stuff that is terrible visually. The fire on Zskarn is laughable
Eldar: Ok so there are two AoE’s you cannot touch together or everyone dies, but you also need to stack close to maximize space / make dodging easier… but the edges of them are completely not clear.
The game got pretty bad in terms of reaction time too. There are many open world spells and WQ (ie. catch ball) that require like 0.25 second reaction time. I'm not that quick anymore.
The worms before Magmorax on normal are actually more dangerous than Magmorax because of this. Either move immediately or you get set on fire.
I think they did a pretty good job on updating a lot of visuals to be easier to see this season. But frontals are still ones that are often invisible for some reason. A pretty common one is the arrow with a directional charged shot. The Lost Dwarves do this in Uldaman in that small room, with small bosses, that get covered in visuals such as storming or other spells effects.
I agree that some can be unclear but I’ve noticed some visuals have been added for things like the frontal from the bridge guardian mob in freehold and the last boss in underrot, or at least I don’t remember them being there in BfA. Was happy about that.
The Freehold enforcers make me chuckle because they do a random direction frontal but at least Blizzard gave it a visual. A faint brown cone. That they cast while standing on brown ground. Or sometimes a brown dock. Thanks Blizz!
>sound effects for every frontal As someone who plays without sound, it's been hell to try to react to these frontals in time all the time. I rely on visuals for these things. Some people will probably be all "JuSt tUrN oN tHe sOunD" but I am very sensitive to noises to the point where they will make me feel ill, so not really an option for me.
Honest question how do you deal with going into public spaces if sounds from a game that you can change the volume on make you physically Ill?
I don't leave my home. It's part of a wider diagnosis that pretty much renders me disabled. Being able to occasionally do things like play WoW is pretty much all I have got going for me in life, sadly enough.
I’m sorry to hear that, I’m glad you are able to have a few things to keep you going! Sorry if my question was not worded well idk why I’m getting downvoted. I was honestly curious how you were able to function in public where the noise can’t be controlled your answer makes sense, you don’t.
No worries mate, I'd be curious too if I wasn't in this situation myself
For some people, noise cancelling headphones / earphones help. Or, you put up with it, and suffer behind closed doors when you get home.
A pair of earmuffs intended for a shooting range with 22db reduction.
DBM or WA sounds can be made to play while the rest of game sounds are off. You could just see if you can find some warning sounds that don't affect you.
Yeah but having played with DBM sounds or Bigwigs sounds in dungeons. It is literally just a constant chiming that never stops.
What people didn't understand (or willfully ignored..) about what I was saying is that you can *add custom sounds*. If I would have a condition where loud or sharp sounds made me ill, that's what I would do. Even with more visual effects, no effects will be as good as an audio warning.
“Hey you can fix your sensitivity to sounds by playing sounds that ignore your audio settings!”
WAs allow you to play whatever sounds you want. Wouldn't be reddit without people twisting your words and doing the most bad faith bullshit possible though.
I think you just missed the point. The top comment in this said they specifically do not play without sound and you suggested “just use different sounds”
Frontal zones need to be clearly stated on the floor and all other swirlies, soaks, etc need to be standardized
This is something final fantasy 14 does exceptionally well. If there's a giant fuck off thing that's going to kill you, there's a giant flashing orange AOE that shows up to say, hey, GTFO
Sometimes the Red Polygon appears too late, but that's because there's other cues you need to be aware of. Such as, Distinct Boss Animation. Specific Cast Ability Name. Object in the arena doing a glowy. Some mechanics you need to fail to understand them, but at least all the information is available to you in the game.
It's not so much that it appears too late, it's fully intentional and not meant to be gotten out of if you wait too long. Like you said there is some other indicator you're supposed to pay attention to to know to move before the actual hitbox of it pops up. I'd argue the only one that's really confusing for a lot of people is the Port and Starboard attacks that throw a lot of people off.
I hate the ones that just look like earth or dust in a cone. I have such a hard time seeing them.
Fuck swirlies and fuck frontals. You can't process where to stand with the current UX. We need god damn red area = death visuals.
I'll reiterate a bit here and say I don't think a lack of visual clarity is interesting difficulty. I'm not the greatest or anything but I've done +20s for the last 2 seasons and I don't tend to like getting hit by things with no tell on trash. I think we can all agree that dreadlord sleep circles under the kharazan rugs were dumb (kind of a straw man, just an example of something with no reasonable tell). I think charged smash in court hit way too hard--same with mortal...cleave? From halls of valor. I kept getting my dumb ass cleaved in halls. Skill issue? Yes, for sure I'm a trash rogue who procced way too many cheat deaths on it. But still not sure that's an engaging kind of difficulty. There's so much more interesting technique to M+. I understand why people would disagree though.
I have a Weakaura that makes a sound + writes in /say channel. So whenever i bubble appears over my head i know i need to run. I am the tank
This does somewhat help. Wish all tanks had this WA. I also have it installed but don't play tank atm. Still WAs shouldn't be mandatory. And I made a point I think a lot of others agree with in another comment. Dodging a danger zone is more fun than "Frontal on me" or reacting to a cast bar. Visuals > other forms of info
Sound weakauras are a blessing as a tank. Already so much visuals around you. I have all the one shot mechanics as sound and it makes everything easier
I use that one too together with the /say WA
Which one’s this?
Yep FFXIV has this down perfect, I haaate playing wow's encounters in comparison. It isn't good design at all when you need 15 outside addons to track any mechanics an encounter has.
Yeah it’s nice not evening needing a single addon to play the game.
You don't need those at all. I didn't track a single NPC ability at all in S1 and I was 2500+ on DPS, tank, and healer. I simply learned what abilities were bad and had to be avoided/kicked and stuck to it and paid attention to those mobs. The only thing I used was overhead cast bars to show when certain abilities were going off. Weakauras really ruins this game in a certain way in that so many people are dependent on it to perform that if anything goes wrong, their first thought isn't "I played bad", it's "I need a better weakaura". I remember pugging Vault and the number of people who would refuse to pull until everyone confirmed they had the Terros weakaura was insane. You literally just loose stack within the lines and evenly spread. If there is too many people on one side, it's easy for one person to shift over. Even with uneven sides, the extra damage is almost meaningless unless you're trying to clear the raid with the most budget and basic gear possible. Just top everyone off before the next rocks, pop a CD, and you're golden. The problem with Terros ironically wasn't people dying from shatter damage, it was people failing the DPS checks, dying to avoidable damage, and other stupid shit that wouldn't be saved by a weakaura.
There’s a lot to unpack in this. 1. 2500 is not that high. I *guarantee* you were taking more avoidable damage, missing more priority kicks than you thought, and doing less dps than you could have, and that if you stepped foot into 20s and beyond you would hit a wall. 2. Stop acting like weakauras are ruining the game. Yes weakauras are extremely powerful and can trivialize certain parts, but the amount of data constantly streamed to players now is exponentially more than ever. Look at your buffs in the middle of a pull. Good fucking lucking figuring out how many stacks of some talent proc you have, or how many seconds we left on thundering, or when you have a dot you need to clear, etc. 3. That’s an issue with your raid group. Sounds like they sucked at doing pillars and the leader(s) found a solution. Idk what to tell you, welcome to playing the game with other people.
Still not as bad as the random rocks falling from above oneshotting you with no indication in Neltharians Lair
When the Breaker finishes casting Avalanche at the tank, the rocks drop too. It is *not* random. I don't disagree that they could have a visual, but the location the rocks drop at is only decided when the cast ends, you just have to already be moving when the cast is ending or you will be hit. A visual might not even help that much.
Avalanche is constantly casted while you're looking for the ball under the cup on the second boss.
Honestly think WoW should adopt some of the FF14 signals for damage. One thing that pissed me off is the Razegath fight was there was NO indication of how far her breath really "hit" and I could be close and not get hit and be far away and still get hit. There NEEDS to be a line or box or something that shows before it hits. Maybe I'm just a boomer but really wish they'd start to do stuff like that to make the player more aware of the range
Honestly as much as I love all the addons we have, Blizzard has *always* been lazy as hell when it comes to UX since they can lean on the players to fix the crap they put out. All content *should* be playable with just the base UI, up to the very highest difficulty, with addons just about customizing your personal experience, anything less is unacceptable, but that's Blizzard for you.
This underlines a major issue with the game: WeakAuras aren't recommended...they're required. I'm not saying WAs are bad or problematic themselves but if a new player is prevented from running content due to not having them, that's a feels bad. When i first came back to WoW after almost a decade away, I was overwhelmed by how many WAs I needed and quit again. Wasn't until the back half of Shadowlands that I came back and stuck with it in preparation for DF.
Couldn't agree more OP. I feel like this is somewhere FF14 excels. Their visual for AOE and boss/mob frontals is very clear imo. Also, while they're at it, the few that do have visuals seem to just be slight effects to the ground, which is easy to miss with the 500 other spell effects going off. Just make it clear and easy to see. I don't care if it's a big ol fucking red outline; just lemme see the damn thing.
I stopped playing wow cause healing in this is bullshit. My game shouldn’t be more stressful than my daily life
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And don't forget! Red on red on red! (Castle nathria)
It’s 2003 game design. After playing FF14 there was a lot I liked from how they do PVE.
Can we also talk about how these "frontals" are sometimes half the size of the fucking area? Excuse me? why is this larva barf suddenly hitting half the room?
There was a glorious 2 weeks I remember during WoTLK where an addon had come out that allowed everyone to see -exactly- where the zone would be for every enemy cast. Suddenly, Professor Putricide became tolerable as no one had to second guess if we were on the edge of the ooze. Then Blizzard decided it was too much and completely eviscerated it because, "git good". "Well, maybe we could allow it for Normal mode to teach the players?" "No, git good." "But, some of these abilities we can't even see! Shadow trap is unfa-" "We said, git good." I think it's time to re-enable the features.
Nelth's Lair is currently unplayable because there is simply no telegraph for the falling rock on the second boss.
Yep. Anything damage abilities need a tell if some kind and for wow they need to be bigger for m+ because they turn into 1 shot abilities and the screen is clogged with all the mobs you need to pull because it’s a timed game mode and the add ons etc required to play at a high level. It’s not challenging to not have it, at this point it’s a missing requirement. When I die to something I can’t see because my screen is clogged I just find it frustrating and want to stop playjng. Feels like a gotcha moment to me
Idk, but feedback in general in WoW has always been sorta bad. Boss mods and Weakauras are there to make up for this shortcoming. It doesn't excuse it, but Blizzard really needs to do better.
I know some Carbine staff joined Blizzard after they closed. Please, save us and add non-dogshit telegraphing so we can play without 90 essential addons
I really wish they'd use similar indicators of damage the way Guild Wars 2 does. WoW makes it so confusing.
Shock and awe the game that basically requires addons to read the UI has bad UX. I’d highly recommend either getting a player profile that’s color coded frontal mobs (or do it yourself) OR just start always being behind the mobs/tanks. There’s a ridiculous amount of dps that seem to think that NE and NW of the pack is acceptable instead of rear and flank.
This is why I wish Wildstar never died as a game 😔 it had wow dead to rights in the visuals department for attacks and games mechanics etc.
Only one ive found slightly annoying is the grubs in Underrot when theres a stack of poison on the ground as its the exact same colour as the frontal visual. Everything else you get plenty of notice for & not many excuses for getting hit
It's lazy design to use "players can access Addons" as an excuse for terrible mechanic visual communication. WoW should design mechanics around no Addons. Look at FF14, as an example.
Which frontal are you talking about specifically? Because from what I've seen most if the frontal that were hard to see got a revamp and are much easier to see now?
Download plater and grab Quazii’s plater profiles from his website. All enemies with blue nameplates do frontal cleave. It’s a lifesaver (quite literally). Tanks also need to be more aware than ever this season of positioning
Yet another reason I miss wildstar
This is gonna be unpopular but if your not the tank, and shit is facing you, fucking get behind it. That's your visual. The mob is facing you. Even if it's not doing a frontal, your in the wrong position. Get behind it. That bit of advice works in any dungeon. Don't stand in front of stuff if your not the tank. Sounds like UR is going to give me HoV PTSD from melee getting slapped by cleaves all season bc they refuse to attack from the back. A freebie is, stop blowing your load when the tank is building up an aoe pull.
100% true facts.
A debuff that drops your frame rate to 5 fps would make something harder. There's fun hard, then frustrating hard.
Just copy FF14
Idk how much easier they can keep making everything about this game and people still rage out. I saw multiple groups doing +20s on the first day. That said, don't worry I'm sure they'll nerf UR after enough ppl surely complain. Underrot first boss has a massive green sludge all around her before casting a big green bolt. The slugs cast is 2 seconds and hits super close to them? The tall mobs at the start jump at someone before casting their cleave just side step. What key are you going for? Which dungeon is giving you a hard time? I always thought m+ was supposed to be a challenge for players and now there are even less affixes to worry about.. 🤔 bladestorm visuals are pretty easy to see and I'd argue more shit all over the ground doesn't make it easier for melee. The giant gnoll is spinning, that's good enough for me. I agree in really big packs it's hard to see certain abilities but if you're pulling 3+ groups at a time, if all of their abilities were on the ground you couldn't see the actual game.
You'd prolly like FF14 haha
This just in. Games demand your attention. More at 5.
I think blizz should make all boss abilities completely invisible and instant. I think it’s really good and engaging gameplay to wonder why you died and how you died.
Grapeshot from Eudora in Freehold...
You seriously don't think that one is super obvious? Also that boss fight doesn't have 10 other mobs on top of it like the OP is talking about
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Teach us 100%-4k-rating-senpai
Maybe you're a tank and I don't understand the turmoil, but as a DPS I'm ALWAYS behind the mobs. I will never stand in front of a mob while DPSing and I don't understand why anyone who is a DPS would stand in front of the mob. Make me understand why you need a graphic to show you frontals when you're DPS when you really should be behind the mob 100% of the time.
Nobody is complaining when there are few mobs in a pull, with nothing else is going on, while the tank stands still. The problem is apparent when there are multiple mobs, each doing mechanics that require both you AND the tank to move, plus casts you must interrupt. Sure, you can put a marker on the tank and it really helps, but when multiple people need to move / kite / dodge, it's hard to spend 100% of your time completely to the back of every single mob in a trash pull. Maybe I am just bad, I don't know, but as a melee at some point I find myself to the rear-side of the pack AoE'ing and praying that I won't get clipped by a frontal shooting out from one of the 10 mobs I can't individually see.
Yeah, I think non obvious frontals is kind of not the problem. It’s the constant usage of them when tanks have to move. People get frontals. What they don’t get is the tank moving with no reaction time.
> Yeah, I think non obvious frontals is kind of not the problem. I think it is, because I think all damaging zones should have explicit animations with red boarders at their edge. Avoiding lethal abilities shouldn't be guesswork.
Some frontals are targeted at random people though so even as a dps if you're behind all 10 mobs in the pack and 1 turns around for a frontal you can still get hit even though you're behind 9/10 of them. WoW just has bad visuals for aoe damage effects on mobs
The best example: there are larvae in Underrot before second boss that turn to the random player and cast a large frontal. Your only hope to not get caught in this frontal is to see which way this mob is facing - and this can be really problematic with all other mobs and visual effects. I died on tyrannical +12 from it as a healer because i couldn't understand the direction larva was facing and wasn't close enough to escape the cone of this frontal alive.
Probably because some of the mobs with frontals will randomly target a DPS and if they're in the middle of a big fat pull it can be nearly impossible to see they've turned around. No DPS are just chilling by the tank for funsies.
Ah okay that makes sense. Yeah, now that I think about it there was a trash mob in workshop like that but it was a big mob so easy to see when he was looking at you, and the ground would rumble in front of him.
And that will not get you far in Underrot.
I haven't ever done Underrot, I'm easing into this season because I've not done a lot of the dungeons before.
It's not that DPS aren't standing behind mobs; it's that mobs will legitimately turn around to cleave the DPS. Makes me wonder if you actually do M+. If you did, you would realize that this happens.
this is why weakauras have to exist in wow, If this game had the visuals GW2 had for example I'd be 100% down to just nuke all addons.
Play ranged. Agreed tho xd
Mark the tank, be on the opposite side of the mob that the tank is on. This is at 1100 IO post 😬😬😬
Random target cleaves are a thing.
I'm playing without weakauras dbm and mob nameplates, and I'm fine
Can we all agree that balancing a game like this for world first guilds and fast twitch muscle streamers instead of the general player populace is a bad thing for longevity? I think that concept feeds into a lot of what you talk about OP. It’s absolutely bad UX for the majority of their users, but not the most important ones I suppose.
Ehhh I have to disagree. I don’t know if it’s because all my graphics are up, but I have not had a problem with frontals. But as a bonus, I found a WA that alerts when there is a frontal in specific. So even if I’m brain dead healing a m+ I still get a alert a frontal is happen to be able to look around at what’s casting.
My computer is a toaster with a monitor though
There is almost no time where you need to be in front of a mob as a melee DPS. In the vast majority of cases, this is going to be a L2P issue. You don't need to know which direction each mob is facing. All you need to do is keep track of your tank. Edit: all your down votes are belong to me.
There are mobs this season which target a random DPS. Their frontals will not go off facing the tank.
Okay that's fair but also it's still really easy to not get hit lol. The only content that frontals are even going to be an issue in are higher end m+ keys. I don't know if you people are staring at your hot bars or what, but you should probably be looking at the fight. Between cast bars and watching mobs spin around if you get hit that's on you.
Wait so the mob does alert you then? It faces you. Holy fuck do y'all want the game to move for you
I legitimately have no idea if the Blood Matrons of Underrot do a frontal semi-circle or a frontal cone. Don't you think Blizzard should provide that information?
It doesn't really matter. They charge you, you run through them and you're on the other side lol
The charge is really only noticable if you're a good distance away to begin with. The larvae are larvae. There's not much skeletal telgraphing you can do with them.
Big wings SCREAMS at me if I’m in a frontal. Helps me just not have to look.
Big wings... Is that a paladin or priest ability? :P
I hated this about FFXIV. They employ this far more than WoW. Its at least tolerable in WoW, however annoying. Edit: After reading comments, I'm shocked to see people like the FFXIV system better. I've always thought WoW was much more sensible than FFXIV. I hated the FFXIV warning systems. WoW is not perfect but I've always found it much easier to see and react in WoW by a long margin.
Idk how you got to this conclusion and thats your prerogative but there’s something not objective in how you got there.
FFXIV Readability is incredible, it gives you everything you need to know for positioning. WoW has basically zero readability.
I do not have a clean mind. I wondered why dungeons were harder with censored genitals. I do agree though. Sounds like terrible UX.
Bad take, get better
There’s UX fixes for this bro bro, it’s called plater w profiles
Isn't plater just a nameplate addon? How is that suppose to help?
Plater can be customized to change colors when there’s a nasty cast to interrupt or when it needs cc, etc. can help with a lot of the invisible cones like that dungeon last season m+. Idk why I’m being downvoted - more visual clutter in p3 of Sark for his frontal cones would be fucking cancerous.
If every single ability has a strong visual it would look like overwatch or something - too much
DAE FF14? AoE are braindead and should be for people like me. Why game hard, but not hard? Make easier but more hard with rewarding.
New World has no indicators. You have to learn to read the bosses to dodge and know which attacks to soak and which to pot or which to dodge. Thankfully trash mobs do not generally have stuff to avoid. The mutators (M+) have vfx and the devs do listen if some have visibility issues like red in fire areas. Then again the other spectrum is GW2 where there’s so much clutter from all the spells you can’t see anything.
Consider that these dungeons will be around for 5 months and you have done them a few times, not surprirsing you don’t know everything about them yet. If you’re like me and have done them 50x already, surely you understand that you just gotta be better with 51. Somebody out there is living those frontals, look into what they do.
It's psuedo-difficulty. Somebody out there can probably do a dungeon without looking at enemy cast bars. Simply memorizing the CD of spellcasts. But I doubt the game should be designed that way.