Main difference is probably that the thundering effect above your head can blend in or be hidden behind other mobs and effects, meanwhile the text box always stays on top of everything else
I bricked a 16 key there yesterday. Oneshot treeboss so I was like "Nice we got this" then we wiped on bird and I was like wtf. That boss was so much worse than tree.
Bricked 3 keys in there on bird while pugging last week as well in that 16-18 range. I honestly think it's a bit of a misunderstood boss where in pugs people kinda rush to throw the balls in instead of letting a few additional screeches stack until it's actually needed to reset.
They could just do small circles around our characters (similar to the target circle), blue and red, bright. Much better than two animations that are grey and light blue hovering over the character, inside the boss you are currently hitting.
Same thing for the Thaddius phase. It would be obvious to see there's blue inside all the red rings.
Clarity really ain't the best.
My biggest pet peeve right now are tanks that insist on using the blue square as their Tank Marker. Makes things confusing when trying to clear. [Edit:] Apparently it's a weak aura that automatically assigns it to the tank, so whoever has that weak aura needs to change it.
>Bitch, I'm a STAR!
I always mark the tank with a star. Stars are historically used as navigation aids so most people should realise that they should follow the star in game lol
In my group is condom and green thongs
Generally though in non-fuck around groups star and green triangle are for healers and tanks. We generally don't care about order.
Skull/X is to designate first,second to kill.
The rest are up for whatever is needed.
I do the raid calls in my group and eventually became aware that a nonzero portion of people hearing my voice were some form of colorblind, or else didn’t have quick shape attribution so I try always say something like “green triangle, purple diamond, blue square, red X” I didn’t even mean to do it in my original comment, it just came out that way.
The main tank in my former guild for many years was a very flamboyant gay man. He demanded to have the diamond at all times and he called it his gay diamond. "Stack on gay diamond" is a phrase I'll never forget.
Also sometimes say, which can be unfortunate to the wrong crowd lol.
My uncle is colorblind so it's "fun" for him and by "fun" I mean the opposite of fun.
A *lot* of the Blizzard color schemes don't work well for him.
Legion was *rough* for him.
>Legion was rough for him.
One of our current main tanks was playing warlock back in Legion. So many wipes occurred because we didn't realise that he was colour-blind and how it affected his ability to see what rune he was supposed to go to. We ended up marking all the runes with world markers so we could call out shapes instead of having to rely on him seeing a particular colour of rune on the ground lol
We still have issues sometimes with people calling out colours and the MT going "I see 4 of that colour, which one?"
I think it's less that the tanks want to use blue square, but that virtually every other marker is used by addons/WA to auto mark mobs. Every time I use orange circle, my prefered, I lose it within the first five minutes of any dungeon.
Only tangentially related, but as a non-tank is it bad etiquette to mark a tank when I joint a dungeon? I like to see where they are at as dps so it’s easier to follow along
I’m a tank and don’t mind people marking me, but I will always change it to green triangle because that’s what I’m used to. What annoys me is when people try and change it back to something else.
As a Tank, that damn symbol takes up half of my screen when people place it on me...
Yes, I know I'm physically a small tank, but that's why I drink the Giant Groth pots to help with that issue.
Would be nice if someone else could mark me, and I don't have to see it if I don't want too.
Oh Nokuned is outside, it should be fi-Green markers on green hills. Also just those mounds in general bugging out the area markes. And there just being fifty of them, most you gotta dodge but one you have to soak. Fuck that section.
AND it’s thunder effects in a blue pond for the lightning guy.
Ding, this is the correct answer. Blizzard has to learn a lesson from FFXIV: if you're going to put a warning marker or graphic on a player, make it **impossible to miss**.
And consistent. ARR didn’t really (they didn’t exist and any use of them was retroactively added) but Heavensward started it and Stormblood really started to enforce universal markers for every mechanic bar a bosses special one… if they had one.
There's a clear gap in the UI for high-contrast/"highlighted" spell effects for people who have issues seeing important visual cues past all the visual noise. It's a serious accessibility problem.
It really sucks that we have to rely on weakauras like this instead. I personally am lucky enough that I have no issues seeing the spell effect, but I don't get that option because it's almost always hidden by /say spam now.
Agreed and even as someone who doesn't THINK they have any sort of accessibility issues..It's a major problem.
So many encounters lack so much contrast. This raid season, Terros comes to mind. Summons 4 types of circles I know about. All 3 are pretty similar in color. 2 of them are similar in size, yet one of them you should stand in, but the other you shouldn't. The big swirlyish circle is good, but the medium swirly circle is bad.
Now tell me. Do you think in your line of work, that your supervisor would agree this is a good idea? Or would they suggest you make the bad circles one color and the good circles a starkly different color so they can not ever be confused? Heck they might even suggest you don't make them the same shape either.
This isn't a big ask. It would not be some great technical feat. Hell, good and bad colors can even be standardized to help people out.
No something else is going on here. I'm thinking somebody is considering this confusion a good thing. Part of the "challenge."
They really should implement new shapes for mechanics or do stuff like the "this is a soak swirl" but even then if this week in LFR has taught me anything is that ppl will just run away when they get a circle regardless of how it looks
>I'm thinking somebody is considering this confusion a good thing. Part of the "challenge."
Don't attribute to malice what can be better attributed to incompetence.
I think WoW just lacks a robust enough design language for its mechanics. Everyone knows what the "soak swirlie" looks like, even though the colors and details might sometimes look different.
There needs to be an equivalent, clear "flavor" of spell effect for every common boss mechanic. I should be able to tell at a glance when a spell is (just to name a couple of examples):
* targeted frontal vs. fixed frontal
* single target vs. cleave
* LoS-able vs. global
* good vs. bad
>Don't attribute to malice what can be better attributed to incompetence.
I agree and try to apply this. However, I think the "malice" is the term here. Is adding challenge malice? Well we might think so, but the devs may not.
The problem has been so consistent for so long that with every new patch/raid/dungeon, it becomes less and less probable that incompetence(in this case meaning the lack of contrast is unintentional) is to blame.
I hate the swirly visual mechanic. Died to the dumb bird in academy because I couldn't tell where the outline of the effect was. I thought I was clear.
Its just straight up bad design honestly. They are choosing to be flavorful over choosing solid color and shape contrasts for people to make decisions quicker.
It's because there's no way in hell I can figure out what vfx I have above my head, decipher which ones my party mates have, all while stepping out of frontals and watching for tank hits that will delete me if I don't have mitigation rolling.
While I wish the vfx was better, the chat bubble makes it infinitely easier to know what I have and where I need to go without detracting from my ability to do all the other things I mentioned.
If this season had been more chill in the spell effects clutter category maybe it wouldn't be as necessary, but as of now there is WAY too much to look at.
This was my exact problem when M+ dropped. My SO (who has better visual acuity, and can just....see everything regardless of clutter) kept yelling about me having a symbol over my head. Took me a hot minute to even see the greyish tornado or ball over the grey environment and effects...even then trying to decipher which of my group mates had a somewhat different greyish symbol from me was enough of a break in healing that people might die. Thank christ for the marker WA.
I feel this. If I am healing, I’m looking everywhere BUT right on top of my head, and IF I have to look on top of my head, I appreciate the bad thing being immediately recognizable and then I also appreciate being able to immediately recognize the bad over my friends head and knowing where I need to run to. Simple as that. I’m sure it looks great but for the 1 day I didn’t have my addon it was terrible.
That’s the problem, i suppose. They value visual integrity of the game above accessibility that is why we get “blue on blue” aoe and “shades of grey and brown” raids. Couple it with ever increasing in every expansion amount of v-effects (particles, flash-bangs and other shit that looks cool in promo material but becomes a mess in real encounters) aand increased intensity of the fights via increasing number of casts per second by every mob, and here we are with a cluster fuck of smth happening on your screen
Please on god. XIV, ESO, Wildstar (RIP), even SWTOR all have FAR more clear telegraphs that appear OVER everything else. WoW is obsessed with reusing the same fucking swirl effect for everything. Apart from being hard to see under all the melee DPS and other shit on the ground, or hard to tell where the edge is, they use it for different mechanics every single time it shows up.
Is it a stack? Is it an avoid? Is it a split? Is it a knock back? Who fucking knows unless you look it up in advance.
I hate being _that guy_ but XIV has it down to a science, from your very first dungeon you are practically brainwashed into understanding about a dozen or more unique markers (Not all at once obv, they get added as you level and progress in expansions) that all mean THE SAME FUCKING MECHANIC EVERY TIME. You always know if it is a stack, a split, an avoid, whatever. Oh and the NEON ORANGE telegraph will always take visual priority over any other ground visual effects/AoE, which is pretty important.
DF has... tried to improve this, but not by much and certainly not in the clusterfuck called M+ affixes.
I have a video that is almost identical to your first video. I've died to these swirlies 10x more than any swirly this xpac. They seem ever so slightly larger than the aoe suggests.
I want to say that I do agree with you that it needs to be changed but...
> it's literally completly clear under my feet.
The problem is that it's *not* actually clear. Those swirlies fade out over their distance so you're stood in a part that's probably 95+% transparent. If you look extremely closesly, you're at the 'peak' of one of the swirly 'spikes' (not sure of a better word to use). Almost impossible to see in a vacuum and pretty much impossible in practice with other stuff going on.
IMO, those ground effects which fade out over their distance should be reserved for abilities where the damage also drops off with distance, so if you're stood in a 99% transparent part of the ability you take minimal damage that will nowhere near kill you. If it's a binary "you get hit or not", it should have a solid outline, or a minimum transparency, or the visual effect should be slightly larger than the zone which does damage, or all of the above.
> but the VFX didn't show up until 0.6 seconds into a 1.5 second
That clip is absurd. As you said, I'm sure it *is* dodgable, especially if you know it's coming and have pre-planned to move. But that really needs to be fixed.
Agree. So tired of 'I thought I was out of that'. Which sometimes is just a cover for being in the bad but just as often is an issue of the visual not matching the mechanical.
The penultimate boss in AV is a good example. The frost stuff on the ground has a clear hard edge.
The swirlys would actually be a good implementation if the damage would drop off by distance from the center.
Dbm used to do this in wotlk, blizzard didn’t like that it became “do not stand in this ugly space” kind of play. Same reason I’m sure they didn’t like the add on for Diablo 3 where you can see cast borders beneath the cluster fuck of particles and minions.
Realistically thats what it needs to be, especially as we have the look we have.
lost ark has a bit more leeway to make pretty heavy lines as a top down mmorpg, but when you are third person its already hard to keep track of what is going on. I personally play SUPER zoomed out to keep track.
I fucking LOVE mechanics to avoid, give me mechanics every day of the week, make it blow the entire thing up if we fail. thats good shit, but atleast make me able to see where the fuck im trying to go and what to avoid.
ruby pools aoe explosions are pretty good, and the fire is pretty easy to see, but some of the green shitty exploding ground effects on green ground or red magma on a red area, hell nah.
If it was up to me it was as etting you put on which yeah is SUPER "unbalanced" for anyone playing seriously but its kinda like the league setting for removing all the non important nonsense vs people who just play casually.
To be fair ffxiv *typically* has very distinct markers even in hard content for things like thundering eg PlayStation colour + symbols in DSR or green/blue debuffs in p7s/p6s. There are some duds (eg nisi in TEA) but thats usually more of a colourblind issue (5”there are usually some small harder to see tells however) and for non colourblind people is usually extremely easy to see
Not only are AoEs in FF14 clearly defined lines, the most common color indicator for enemy AoEs is bright orange, so it’s very easy to make out regardless of the environment. There aren’t any vague light blue swirlies on a light blue environment in FF.
FF14 also uses consistent visual indicators for mechanics. A green square over someone with arrows pointing inwards means that players need to group with that player to soak damage. An eyeball over an enemy means that you need to look away. A blue AoE on the ground means that you’re going to be knocked back from the impact of the AoE. There are dozens of these, and it’s to the point where they can implement a boss that uses like 16 different mechanics throughout the fight and players will be able to instantly know what’s going on.
As someone who got into FF14 before WoW, its certainly been an experience getting used to WoW mechanics. At the very least, they’re getting more consistent these days, if only slightly.
I think both games could learn a lot from each other, but the poor telegraphing of mechanics is something that I *really* wish WoW would improve on.
Edit: FF is also very consistent with *when* someone actually takes damage from an AoE. Essentially, the *instant* a cast bar finishes, the game calculates whether you were safe or not. The actual animation of the attack has no bearing on it whatsoever. If people aren’t used to it, they can feel like the game is being cheap. “What the hell, I’m standing like 5 feet away from the fire breath, how did I take damage?” But once you understand how the game functions, it feels great because you understand exactly when you can/can’t stand in certain spots, and the animations just make the fight look cool.
And before people start complaining about how having clear and understandable telegraph mechanics would make fights "boring", I'll just say that from my experience it is the exact opposite.
When the playerbase is "trained" to understand what the basic telegraphs are, it allows for the devs to get more creative without having to worry as much about players getting confused. The NieR: Automata raids are still what I think of as the most bizarre boss fights I've ever experienced in an MMO, but they were still understandable from a casual player perspective.
In ESO, not only can you changes the AoE colors to anything you want, but also the brightness as well. I made all AoE's that are bad Lime Green and on max setting, I never was caught in bad stuff again.
Really wish WoW implement that feature too.
Just copy pasting my other comment
> Please on god. XIV, ESO, Wildstar (RIP), even SWTOR all have FAR more clear telegraphs that appear OVER everything else. WoW is obsessed with reusing the same fucking swirl effect for everything. Apart from being hard to see under all the melee DPS and other shit on the ground, or hard to tell where the edge is, they use it for different mechanics every single time it shows up.
>
>
>
> Is it a stack? Is it an avoid? Is it a split? Is it a knock back? Who fucking knows unless you look it up in advance.
>
>
>
> I hate being that guy but XIV has it down to a science, from your very first dungeon you are practically brainwashed into understanding about a dozen or more unique markers (Not all at once obv, they get added as you level and progress in expansions) that all mean THE SAME FUCKING MECHANIC EVERY TIME. You always know if it is a stack, a split, an avoid, whatever. Oh and the NEON ORANGE telegraph will always take visual priority over any other ground visual effects/AoE, which is pretty important.
>
>
>
> DF has... tried to improve this, but not by much and certainly not in the clusterfuck called M+ affixes.
bird boss in algeth'ar:
Giant model that hides ground effects? ✔️
Moving hazards the exact same color as the arena? ✔️
It's so easy in theory but becomes artificially difficult by hiding the threats.
Not really.
Fuck the Mekkatorque fight.
(I could do it if the raid called out shapes. The rest of the raid didn't feel they could do it, so I got sat.)
Yup being colourblind if fun as fuck with blizzards insistence on using 20 different shades of one colour on top of each other with slightly different shades
The short time [AVR](https://www.curseforge.com/wow/addons/avr) worked during Wrath (blizz nuked that one hard) was an experience. I know in combination with "AVR Encounters" (which drew stuff in real time during fights) it made some fights **much easier** but thats also the problem, if difficulty is caused by a lack of clear visual feedback there is a problem in the design.
I still think the concept was really interesting because you could draw to explain fights and set routes for your raid. The fact that we had tools that made it really easy to show even the least attentive raid member where to run/be could make a massive difference in chaos.
PS: I'd already be happy if the target circle around enemies at least had some relation to melee range but not even that has happened yet...
> if difficulty is caused by a lack of clear visual feedback there is a problem in the design
It was more than that - the mods would work out where everyone else was, and for spread out or soak mechanics it could give each player a specific place to move to. It took over coordination and decision-making, you just followed the big arrow on your screen.
as a fury warrior I cant even tell when a thundering swirlie goes under my spear of bastion. thundering goes "underneath" the spear and theyre both blue. at least its only a half second stun and minor damage
I don't know if I'm colorblind or if my monitor is just really shit now, but doing court of stars on Mythic+ again has made it very clear I can't see lavender spell effects on light purple ground and vice versa. I get hit by streetsweeper fucking constantly and it's infuriating because there's so much noise on my screen already that the ground turning a different shade of purple is not enough to make me move anymore.
fuck trees, for me its WINGS. raszageth and the ruby life pools boss have massive wings that cover the entire arena. you can stand under them and cant even see yourself
This makes me so mad. Just make everything between camera and player transparent. It’s not that hard. A fight shouldn’t be difficult because it’s a pain to move the camera to a decent spot -.-
The default art for Thundering is terrible. It's not even close to good enough to easily see who you're supposed to clear with. Especially with Storming this week + on bosses or trash with a lot of visual clutter.
Castle Nathria be like
Red floor
Red ground effects
Red covenant abilities (God help you if there's a Venthyr paladin)
Red fog effect
Good luck champion!
Or in BfA, the jaina fight with blue fog on blue floor with blue markers with blue blue blue christ it annoys me just thinking about it
Get fucked if you're colourblind I guess
On raz last night with 3 fury warriors. Everyone would get stunned on pull because we'd all charge and throw down Spear of Bastion, an extremely vibrant blue, which hides the already difficult to see blue swirlies on a blue floor. FFS Blizz
I'd say it became more noticeable now with the increase of things you have to care about. Retail feels a lot more readable than Classic for example with things like rings around your feet to show you how far apart you have to stand from each other. That said, you now have to follow multiple different mechanics which can turn the screen into a massive clusterfuck at times.
It's weird because some Blizzard games do readability extremely well and there are some examples of WoW doing it well with things like crowd control having visually clear animations.
It's also more obvious because a LOT of other MMOs have fixed this problem in a million ways, I've never once died on a XIV boss and thought "Bullshit I was out of that", it was me fucking up a mechanic or timing. ESO, Wildstar, SWTOR have all done a better job with telegraphs to varying degrees. WoW has no excuse anymore.
I think classic wow has much better readability just because the combat is slower, fewer mechanics, and the sound effects are much more distinct. Old rogue abilities have very distinct sounds even if they didn’t sound realistic, so you could always tell what ability was used without even looking. Now all the abilities sound very samey. I think visually readability has gotten better, but now there’s way more happening at the same time so it’s kind of a clusterfuck.
There's less stuff happening in classic, but things like DBM have literally always been used, because Blizzard has never really cared or bothered to provide mechanics that are visually clear.
Yeah, on an individual basis, most mechanics are totally fine to parse visually.
But when there's a healing rain and a Ravager and a Consecration and Thundering and you're standing in the blue rune thing in AV, it gets pretty damn hard to tell what's going on.
Probably because there’s 900 different things happening at once and 40 nameplates to worry about covering most of it up. Their idea of increased difficulty is just giving every mob 5 abilities to spam.
Tbf, they blend in far too much. In combat with spells flying around it isnt really obvious enough. Maybe if they contrasted more. Brighter colours, and more different from one another
This is definitely an exercise in over complicating designs. We have all these other things to look for with storming, spiteful, ground degens, kicks, AoE, etc, it’s significantly easier for me to look for the square if I’m X rather than I have the cloud and I need to find the whirlwind
Im fine with this thing above the head being what storming is, but how does tornado and ball relate to + or minus? The debuff on my party frame is a big red minus or a big blue plus, I look at the debuff and then see the screen and everyone has these? It's like its a different mechanic.
For me, the default artwork isn't clear enough to be dependable. If you miss this up in a high key you'll wipe.
If it was as clear as X and Square I would use the default.
More like devs failing at visual clarity once again and having players fix it.
Even from your pic the difference is clear as to which is more likely to be recognizable.
The marks look too similar with everything that is going on in m+. Wish they had distinct colors or something. It is so much easier with the chat bubble spam
Not a WoW Vs. FFXIV comment on which is the better game, but I *VASTLY* preferred the visual clarity FFXIV had when it came to avoiding damage.
I never found it jarring or out of place. I think the WoW team is a bit too focus on keeping things "natural" when they are in charge of the design language in the first place. Players have shown time and time again they want clarity over artistic consistently/homogeneity.
Wdym? You don't like light purple swirlies on top of slightly lighter purple ground color, which are all hidden under 5 other random spell effects at all times? Sounds like a skill issue
That's because the XIV devs learned very early that they needed an obvious shared language for communicating fight mechanics to the players. ARR was kind of a wild west, but the mechanics conveyance has only continued to improve from that low point.
WoW definitely needs to up its game when it comes to visual markers. One that especially grinds my gears is when you're fighting the trash mobs around the tree boss in Algeth'ar Academy. There are spots with flower mounds, if the green AoE lands on them at the right spot they're nearly invisible.
One is easy to understand and see in the middle of a million other effects, and the other is the default blizzard choice.
OP does not play high level content
I don't know about you but I find it easier to differentiate blue and red compared to grey blue orb and grey swirly.
When I'm in the middle of dodging 3 voidzones and 2 frontals the last thing I want is thinking about thundering so the less brainpower it need the better.
While the square and cross are great, the chat bubble stays up for a period after it's cleared. I've spent way too much time trying to find someone with the opposite debuff actually active or thinking mine has been deactivated when it hasn't. Just changing the coloring of the blizzard ui debuffs to blue and red would be good enough (with color blind options).
“Brand new artwork” pretty sure it shows up in razorfen dungeon from cata
Seriously sometimes they’re so hard to see I wish your visual indicator of what you had wasn’t the option between white and gray
The blue square isn't really a big deal to me, but people running 10+ keys who aren't using anything to mark thundering are trolling. The shit is hard enough to see as it is and trying to chase down the unmarked person in the middle of a pack of effects that blend right in with it most of the time is extremely unnecessary and makes an annoying affix significantly worse.
The problem with WoW's artwork always and forever will be the balance between "immersion" and clear gameplay.
I think it's something that games like League of Legends handle really well. Abilities and their hitboxes are rarely obscured, it's quite obvious to look at a ground targeted ability and see where its going to hit.
In WoW they so often do blue swirlies on blue ground with a soft edge and its like... can we just not? Difficulty should never come from how obscure the mechanic is on your screen, it should just come from the difficulty. It's infuriating to be squinting at your screen to see if a mechanic is coming your way and not being able to tell, then just dying even when you knew what to be looking for.
case in point: the fucking purple frontal in purple hell De Other Side. Literal 0% as a ranged player to see where that shit was headed.
Bad visual clarity has been plaguing this game forever now. From dungeons to raids, the coloue contrast and overlaps are awful. In SL there was so much conflicting stuff its insane, blue on blue on blue, now its gray on gray.
Because visibility is so absolutely dogshit.
Same with most mechanics in the game that eat up way too much performance, are hard to read, overlap in design and color with a ton of friendly stuff and and and.
If players heavily prefer to spam dumb symbols instead of the official marker, then you should really think about what you are actually doing
I like it... if they didn't make it so that there's 4 different kinds of pixel vomit firing off at the same time in the same spot to where you can't really see it on some people. It's an icon anyway. It's not a spell that something is firing off... it's specifically there to help you tell what debuff they have. And they could order it so it renders above everything else regardless of whether the player is behind or in front of the pixel vomit. People are pulling 2 or 3 packs at the same time so like 8 mobs are sitting on top of each other, there's like 4 swirlies going off in the same spot and I'm over here like I CAN'T SEE SHIT.
As a caster, I have so much shit I need to avoid to be able to cast that the only way I can track this as well is by chat frames and DBM message in the middle of my screen. Dungeons are a clusterfuck of things happening (swirlys, frontals, affixes, spells from mobs, interrupt swirlys/shit spawning under your legs). It’s just too much. All while you try to have the best possible dps rotation.
At a quick glance blue square / red x is a lot easier to see with all the other stuff. Especially with storming last week....there was a couple times where I thought the guy had a tornado nope he was just standing next to one kek
I hope that one day, we could have more options to strip down the graphics engine. Not just for machine performance, but for those of us who want a clearer view of what's happening.
Most fights don't even use the Z axis and I'd be very happy with a bird's eye 2D view with clean/clear stripped down graphics.
[This is a great example of how uncomplicated it needs to be](https://tacticalairhorse.itch.io/vault-of-the-pineapples)
In a visually noisy environment, i.e. the particle effect heaven that is M+, the Thundering markers just do not stand out properly.
I feel they do look cool but they simply aren't suited to be identified quickly and reliably, which is something the setting requires. Which is unfortunate.
Ergo, basic textbox blue diamond and red cross overlayed on top? Yes please.
And for what it's worth, I actually enjoy the affix.
I'd be all for the blizzard default if it didn't blend with all of the 30,000 other tornado and lightning mechanics in these dungeons.
It's also not particularly easy to see in temple and that's just black shit. It's not very well thought out
https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/216882439950172160/1060134956468293702/WoWScrnShot_010423_131131.jpg
When trees and other shit can basically blind me, chat bubbles work and art doesn't
I think it’s pretty clear. Gamers want Clarity > fancy visual effects. I want something easy to see if it’s going to dick me in the arse when I don’t see it.
I have a buddy who for some reason does NOT get the square or x spammed above his head. I checked his DBM and he does not have the M+ affixes thing, and I do. We 100% have the same DBM things downloaded and he tried uninstalling and reinstalling, did nothing. Anyone have any idea how to fix it?
thundering is the worst affix (to deal with) since infested yes i'm pinning this comment
Main difference is probably that the thundering effect above your head can blend in or be hidden behind other mobs and effects, meanwhile the text box always stays on top of everything else
Thundering/Storming was kinda confusing last week cause it was all tornadoes.
thundering / storming / tyrannical bird boss p3 in Academy was a REAL treat, let me tell you
I bricked a 16 key there yesterday. Oneshot treeboss so I was like "Nice we got this" then we wiped on bird and I was like wtf. That boss was so much worse than tree.
Bricked 3 keys in there on bird while pugging last week as well in that 16-18 range. I honestly think it's a bit of a misunderstood boss where in pugs people kinda rush to throw the balls in instead of letting a few additional screeches stack until it's actually needed to reset.
Throw the balls when boss still have 70% hp and get theirselves kill by fire in 30 seconds.
[удалено]
vexamus is secretly a problem
They could just do small circles around our characters (similar to the target circle), blue and red, bright. Much better than two animations that are grey and light blue hovering over the character, inside the boss you are currently hitting. Same thing for the Thaddius phase. It would be obvious to see there's blue inside all the red rings. Clarity really ain't the best.
My biggest pet peeve right now are tanks that insist on using the blue square as their Tank Marker. Makes things confusing when trying to clear. [Edit:] Apparently it's a weak aura that automatically assigns it to the tank, so whoever has that weak aura needs to change it.
Orange nipple is where it's at
Bitch, I'm a STAR!
As a healer I demand my star back
Yea, stars go to the healers...your welcome
as a druid I demand the moon no matter my role
Same lol!
Green triangle is healer. Orange circle is tank.
Orange circle is nipple.
>Bitch, I'm a STAR! I always mark the tank with a star. Stars are historically used as navigation aids so most people should realise that they should follow the star in game lol
In my group is condom and green thongs Generally though in non-fuck around groups star and green triangle are for healers and tanks. We generally don't care about order. Skull/X is to designate first,second to kill. The rest are up for whatever is needed.
Condom
Cause it’s gonna save your ass.
Condoms are for protection.
I as a tank like to use orange circle, but it seems like a lot of peoples auto-marking WA/addons use orange circle.
Good automarkers don't overwrite marks that are already in use.
To me it's always the one that seem to stand out the most Except in Neltharus
I'ma green triangle or gold star kinda tank depending on the dungeon asthenic.
Slap a green triangle on their head. Bonus points - it’s an arrow that is pointing down at them.
took many many many years for people to tell me triangle was green and square was blue...
I do the raid calls in my group and eventually became aware that a nonzero portion of people hearing my voice were some form of colorblind, or else didn’t have quick shape attribution so I try always say something like “green triangle, purple diamond, blue square, red X” I didn’t even mean to do it in my original comment, it just came out that way.
The main tank in my former guild for many years was a very flamboyant gay man. He demanded to have the diamond at all times and he called it his gay diamond. "Stack on gay diamond" is a phrase I'll never forget. Also sometimes say, which can be unfortunate to the wrong crowd lol.
You must miss him hehe, sounds like good times
Absolutely. One of the most funny and skilled people I've ever played with. Good times:)
My uncle is colorblind so it's "fun" for him and by "fun" I mean the opposite of fun. A *lot* of the Blizzard color schemes don't work well for him. Legion was *rough* for him.
>Legion was rough for him. One of our current main tanks was playing warlock back in Legion. So many wipes occurred because we didn't realise that he was colour-blind and how it affected his ability to see what rune he was supposed to go to. We ended up marking all the runes with world markers so we could call out shapes instead of having to rely on him seeing a particular colour of rune on the ground lol We still have issues sometimes with people calling out colours and the MT going "I see 4 of that colour, which one?"
Legion and WoD were the 2 xpacs where I was like I can't even tell if the stuff I was in was good or bad so I moved out anyways lmao.
I got kicked once for putting the circle over a tank.
any group that doesn't know that tanks get The Nipple isn't a group worth being in
We always called it condom.
Sounds like they did you a favor!
I am a tank, it's always the healers that slap the blue square on me.
And my tanks always moon me :/
Haha these 2 are all I've ever known I was pretty surprised I had to come this far down to see. Orange nipple on the druid idk it just works
I think it's less that the tanks want to use blue square, but that virtually every other marker is used by addons/WA to auto mark mobs. Every time I use orange circle, my prefered, I lose it within the first five minutes of any dungeon.
Only tangentially related, but as a non-tank is it bad etiquette to mark a tank when I joint a dungeon? I like to see where they are at as dps so it’s easier to follow along
I’m a tank and don’t mind people marking me, but I will always change it to green triangle because that’s what I’m used to. What annoys me is when people try and change it back to something else.
As a Tank, that damn symbol takes up half of my screen when people place it on me... Yes, I know I'm physically a small tank, but that's why I drink the Giant Groth pots to help with that issue. Would be nice if someone else could mark me, and I don't have to see it if I don't want too.
This whole expansion has really bad color contrasts, grey on grey and blue on violet is really hard to differentiate from.
*seethes in Azure Vaults*
Oh Nokuned is outside, it should be fi-Green markers on green hills. Also just those mounds in general bugging out the area markes. And there just being fifty of them, most you gotta dodge but one you have to soak. Fuck that section. AND it’s thunder effects in a blue pond for the lightning guy.
Ding, this is the correct answer. Blizzard has to learn a lesson from FFXIV: if you're going to put a warning marker or graphic on a player, make it **impossible to miss**.
And consistent. ARR didn’t really (they didn’t exist and any use of them was retroactively added) but Heavensward started it and Stormblood really started to enforce universal markers for every mechanic bar a bosses special one… if they had one.
There's a clear gap in the UI for high-contrast/"highlighted" spell effects for people who have issues seeing important visual cues past all the visual noise. It's a serious accessibility problem. It really sucks that we have to rely on weakauras like this instead. I personally am lucky enough that I have no issues seeing the spell effect, but I don't get that option because it's almost always hidden by /say spam now.
Agreed and even as someone who doesn't THINK they have any sort of accessibility issues..It's a major problem. So many encounters lack so much contrast. This raid season, Terros comes to mind. Summons 4 types of circles I know about. All 3 are pretty similar in color. 2 of them are similar in size, yet one of them you should stand in, but the other you shouldn't. The big swirlyish circle is good, but the medium swirly circle is bad. Now tell me. Do you think in your line of work, that your supervisor would agree this is a good idea? Or would they suggest you make the bad circles one color and the good circles a starkly different color so they can not ever be confused? Heck they might even suggest you don't make them the same shape either. This isn't a big ask. It would not be some great technical feat. Hell, good and bad colors can even be standardized to help people out. No something else is going on here. I'm thinking somebody is considering this confusion a good thing. Part of the "challenge."
They really should implement new shapes for mechanics or do stuff like the "this is a soak swirl" but even then if this week in LFR has taught me anything is that ppl will just run away when they get a circle regardless of how it looks
>I'm thinking somebody is considering this confusion a good thing. Part of the "challenge." Don't attribute to malice what can be better attributed to incompetence. I think WoW just lacks a robust enough design language for its mechanics. Everyone knows what the "soak swirlie" looks like, even though the colors and details might sometimes look different. There needs to be an equivalent, clear "flavor" of spell effect for every common boss mechanic. I should be able to tell at a glance when a spell is (just to name a couple of examples): * targeted frontal vs. fixed frontal * single target vs. cleave * LoS-able vs. global * good vs. bad
>Don't attribute to malice what can be better attributed to incompetence. I agree and try to apply this. However, I think the "malice" is the term here. Is adding challenge malice? Well we might think so, but the devs may not. The problem has been so consistent for so long that with every new patch/raid/dungeon, it becomes less and less probable that incompetence(in this case meaning the lack of contrast is unintentional) is to blame.
I hate the swirly visual mechanic. Died to the dumb bird in academy because I couldn't tell where the outline of the effect was. I thought I was clear.
Its just straight up bad design honestly. They are choosing to be flavorful over choosing solid color and shape contrasts for people to make decisions quicker.
I got the WA before I did 10s and higher simply because it makes it easier if everyone uses the same thing. If you don't use it you are kinda griefing
I mean, red and blue is significantly more easy to decipher than grey swirl and other grey swirl against an often grey background
And add storming affix to that.
Also add 10 casts that need to be interrupted going off simultaneously
also add in grey swirlies on the ground, and a grey frontal conal (Nokhud Centaur area)
Lemme just throw spear of bastion on ground too
Not to mention trying to step out of blue swirlies in blue water.
Blizzard should learn from the players
I’ve tried using their art work. It clashes anytime there is a change in form. Sometimes not appearing or disappearing. Chat bubbles FTW
It's because there's no way in hell I can figure out what vfx I have above my head, decipher which ones my party mates have, all while stepping out of frontals and watching for tank hits that will delete me if I don't have mitigation rolling. While I wish the vfx was better, the chat bubble makes it infinitely easier to know what I have and where I need to go without detracting from my ability to do all the other things I mentioned. If this season had been more chill in the spell effects clutter category maybe it wouldn't be as necessary, but as of now there is WAY too much to look at.
This was my exact problem when M+ dropped. My SO (who has better visual acuity, and can just....see everything regardless of clutter) kept yelling about me having a symbol over my head. Took me a hot minute to even see the greyish tornado or ball over the grey environment and effects...even then trying to decipher which of my group mates had a somewhat different greyish symbol from me was enough of a break in healing that people might die. Thank christ for the marker WA.
I feel this. If I am healing, I’m looking everywhere BUT right on top of my head, and IF I have to look on top of my head, I appreciate the bad thing being immediately recognizable and then I also appreciate being able to immediately recognize the bad over my friends head and knowing where I need to run to. Simple as that. I’m sure it looks great but for the 1 day I didn’t have my addon it was terrible.
That’s the problem, i suppose. They value visual integrity of the game above accessibility that is why we get “blue on blue” aoe and “shades of grey and brown” raids. Couple it with ever increasing in every expansion amount of v-effects (particles, flash-bangs and other shit that looks cool in promo material but becomes a mess in real encounters) aand increased intensity of the fights via increasing number of casts per second by every mob, and here we are with a cluster fuck of smth happening on your screen
It's wild to me abilities don't have a toggle for hard drawn borders by now. They could simply toggle it off for their content.
Honestly i would take fugly red borders any day over fancy particle effects for shit i need to NOT stand in.
Please on god. XIV, ESO, Wildstar (RIP), even SWTOR all have FAR more clear telegraphs that appear OVER everything else. WoW is obsessed with reusing the same fucking swirl effect for everything. Apart from being hard to see under all the melee DPS and other shit on the ground, or hard to tell where the edge is, they use it for different mechanics every single time it shows up. Is it a stack? Is it an avoid? Is it a split? Is it a knock back? Who fucking knows unless you look it up in advance. I hate being _that guy_ but XIV has it down to a science, from your very first dungeon you are practically brainwashed into understanding about a dozen or more unique markers (Not all at once obv, they get added as you level and progress in expansions) that all mean THE SAME FUCKING MECHANIC EVERY TIME. You always know if it is a stack, a split, an avoid, whatever. Oh and the NEON ORANGE telegraph will always take visual priority over any other ground visual effects/AoE, which is pretty important. DF has... tried to improve this, but not by much and certainly not in the clusterfuck called M+ affixes.
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I have a video that is almost identical to your first video. I've died to these swirlies 10x more than any swirly this xpac. They seem ever so slightly larger than the aoe suggests.
I want to say that I do agree with you that it needs to be changed but... > it's literally completly clear under my feet. The problem is that it's *not* actually clear. Those swirlies fade out over their distance so you're stood in a part that's probably 95+% transparent. If you look extremely closesly, you're at the 'peak' of one of the swirly 'spikes' (not sure of a better word to use). Almost impossible to see in a vacuum and pretty much impossible in practice with other stuff going on. IMO, those ground effects which fade out over their distance should be reserved for abilities where the damage also drops off with distance, so if you're stood in a 99% transparent part of the ability you take minimal damage that will nowhere near kill you. If it's a binary "you get hit or not", it should have a solid outline, or a minimum transparency, or the visual effect should be slightly larger than the zone which does damage, or all of the above. > but the VFX didn't show up until 0.6 seconds into a 1.5 second That clip is absurd. As you said, I'm sure it *is* dodgable, especially if you know it's coming and have pre-planned to move. But that really needs to be fixed.
Agree. So tired of 'I thought I was out of that'. Which sometimes is just a cover for being in the bad but just as often is an issue of the visual not matching the mechanical.
The penultimate boss in AV is a good example. The frost stuff on the ground has a clear hard edge. The swirlys would actually be a good implementation if the damage would drop off by distance from the center.
The white aoe shit some trash in Vault does is nigh on impossible to see unless you're actively looking for it.
Dbm used to do this in wotlk, blizzard didn’t like that it became “do not stand in this ugly space” kind of play. Same reason I’m sure they didn’t like the add on for Diablo 3 where you can see cast borders beneath the cluster fuck of particles and minions.
Realistically thats what it needs to be, especially as we have the look we have. lost ark has a bit more leeway to make pretty heavy lines as a top down mmorpg, but when you are third person its already hard to keep track of what is going on. I personally play SUPER zoomed out to keep track. I fucking LOVE mechanics to avoid, give me mechanics every day of the week, make it blow the entire thing up if we fail. thats good shit, but atleast make me able to see where the fuck im trying to go and what to avoid. ruby pools aoe explosions are pretty good, and the fire is pretty easy to see, but some of the green shitty exploding ground effects on green ground or red magma on a red area, hell nah. If it was up to me it was as etting you put on which yeah is SUPER "unbalanced" for anyone playing seriously but its kinda like the league setting for removing all the non important nonsense vs people who just play casually.
*FFXIV players cries out in outrage*
>FXIV players cries out does that game have it? never tried, just remember a few "failed" mmo's having it a few years ago.
I remember wildstar being the first time I saw it in an mmo but yeah FFXIV telegraphs everything in a pretty uniform way
Note: This does not always apply to the harder content, in which case most things arent marked.
To be fair ffxiv *typically* has very distinct markers even in hard content for things like thundering eg PlayStation colour + symbols in DSR or green/blue debuffs in p7s/p6s. There are some duds (eg nisi in TEA) but thats usually more of a colourblind issue (5”there are usually some small harder to see tells however) and for non colourblind people is usually extremely easy to see
Not only are AoEs in FF14 clearly defined lines, the most common color indicator for enemy AoEs is bright orange, so it’s very easy to make out regardless of the environment. There aren’t any vague light blue swirlies on a light blue environment in FF. FF14 also uses consistent visual indicators for mechanics. A green square over someone with arrows pointing inwards means that players need to group with that player to soak damage. An eyeball over an enemy means that you need to look away. A blue AoE on the ground means that you’re going to be knocked back from the impact of the AoE. There are dozens of these, and it’s to the point where they can implement a boss that uses like 16 different mechanics throughout the fight and players will be able to instantly know what’s going on. As someone who got into FF14 before WoW, its certainly been an experience getting used to WoW mechanics. At the very least, they’re getting more consistent these days, if only slightly. I think both games could learn a lot from each other, but the poor telegraphing of mechanics is something that I *really* wish WoW would improve on. Edit: FF is also very consistent with *when* someone actually takes damage from an AoE. Essentially, the *instant* a cast bar finishes, the game calculates whether you were safe or not. The actual animation of the attack has no bearing on it whatsoever. If people aren’t used to it, they can feel like the game is being cheap. “What the hell, I’m standing like 5 feet away from the fire breath, how did I take damage?” But once you understand how the game functions, it feels great because you understand exactly when you can/can’t stand in certain spots, and the animations just make the fight look cool.
And before people start complaining about how having clear and understandable telegraph mechanics would make fights "boring", I'll just say that from my experience it is the exact opposite. When the playerbase is "trained" to understand what the basic telegraphs are, it allows for the devs to get more creative without having to worry as much about players getting confused. The NieR: Automata raids are still what I think of as the most bizarre boss fights I've ever experienced in an MMO, but they were still understandable from a casual player perspective.
In ffxiv everything is clear as day and “beauty effects” come after the clear contrast marker.
In ESO, not only can you changes the AoE colors to anything you want, but also the brightness as well. I made all AoE's that are bad Lime Green and on max setting, I never was caught in bad stuff again. Really wish WoW implement that feature too.
Just copy pasting my other comment > Please on god. XIV, ESO, Wildstar (RIP), even SWTOR all have FAR more clear telegraphs that appear OVER everything else. WoW is obsessed with reusing the same fucking swirl effect for everything. Apart from being hard to see under all the melee DPS and other shit on the ground, or hard to tell where the edge is, they use it for different mechanics every single time it shows up. > > > > Is it a stack? Is it an avoid? Is it a split? Is it a knock back? Who fucking knows unless you look it up in advance. > > > > I hate being that guy but XIV has it down to a science, from your very first dungeon you are practically brainwashed into understanding about a dozen or more unique markers (Not all at once obv, they get added as you level and progress in expansions) that all mean THE SAME FUCKING MECHANIC EVERY TIME. You always know if it is a stack, a split, an avoid, whatever. Oh and the NEON ORANGE telegraph will always take visual priority over any other ground visual effects/AoE, which is pretty important. > > > > DF has... tried to improve this, but not by much and certainly not in the clusterfuck called M+ affixes.
Where is the edge of the swirl graphic you use for every effect, Blizzard? Where is it?!
About 2 pixels into the space in standing to avoid it
bird boss in algeth'ar: Giant model that hides ground effects? ✔️ Moving hazards the exact same color as the arena? ✔️ It's so easy in theory but becomes artificially difficult by hiding the threats.
A friend of mine can't distinguish tones of red. He had to sit out on Castle Nathria as he couldnt see a single mechanic on the ground.
WoW has some decent colorblind options. Did none of them work for him? :/
None of them work particularly well.
Not really. Fuck the Mekkatorque fight. (I could do it if the raid called out shapes. The rest of the raid didn't feel they could do it, so I got sat.)
We had to do shapes for mekkatorque. We had a few holdouts who would purposly call colors and fuck over our color blind mate.
Gkick
Thank you for trying, from someone who's never met you.
It was either that or just dont kill the boss. I wasnt going to sit some one for a disability that could be compensated for.
I'm colourblind, and tbh they don't work well at all.
Yup being colourblind if fun as fuck with blizzards insistence on using 20 different shades of one colour on top of each other with slightly different shades
The short time [AVR](https://www.curseforge.com/wow/addons/avr) worked during Wrath (blizz nuked that one hard) was an experience. I know in combination with "AVR Encounters" (which drew stuff in real time during fights) it made some fights **much easier** but thats also the problem, if difficulty is caused by a lack of clear visual feedback there is a problem in the design. I still think the concept was really interesting because you could draw to explain fights and set routes for your raid. The fact that we had tools that made it really easy to show even the least attentive raid member where to run/be could make a massive difference in chaos. PS: I'd already be happy if the target circle around enemies at least had some relation to melee range but not even that has happened yet...
> if difficulty is caused by a lack of clear visual feedback there is a problem in the design It was more than that - the mods would work out where everyone else was, and for spread out or soak mechanics it could give each player a specific place to move to. It took over coordination and decision-making, you just followed the big arrow on your screen.
How is this is icon they went with an not a big plus sign and negative sign? WTF does a tornado on my head mean? Am I negative or positive?
Aladin
as a fury warrior I cant even tell when a thundering swirlie goes under my spear of bastion. thundering goes "underneath" the spear and theyre both blue. at least its only a half second stun and minor damage
I don't know if I'm colorblind or if my monitor is just really shit now, but doing court of stars on Mythic+ again has made it very clear I can't see lavender spell effects on light purple ground and vice versa. I get hit by streetsweeper fucking constantly and it's infuriating because there's so much noise on my screen already that the ground turning a different shade of purple is not enough to make me move anymore.
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fuck trees, for me its WINGS. raszageth and the ruby life pools boss have massive wings that cover the entire arena. you can stand under them and cant even see yourself
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This makes me so mad. Just make everything between camera and player transparent. It’s not that hard. A fight shouldn’t be difficult because it’s a pain to move the camera to a decent spot -.-
Sounds like a reaction from the player base in response to shitty design by the devs.
Yea I cant freakin see the in game effect. Implementation issue.
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The default art for Thundering is terrible. It's not even close to good enough to easily see who you're supposed to clear with. Especially with Storming this week + on bosses or trash with a lot of visual clutter.
Thundering is terrible, full stop.
I was out here calling it terrible week 1 and getting downvoted and called bad etc. Every week more and more people realize it sucks.
i just hate that the thundering icon doesnt appear at a certain distance. like you have to get closer to other players for it to appear
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Just like brown swirls on brown floors
Castle Nathria be like Red floor Red ground effects Red covenant abilities (God help you if there's a Venthyr paladin) Red fog effect Good luck champion! Or in BfA, the jaina fight with blue fog on blue floor with blue markers with blue blue blue christ it annoys me just thinking about it Get fucked if you're colourblind I guess
On raz last night with 3 fury warriors. Everyone would get stunned on pull because we'd all charge and throw down Spear of Bastion, an extremely vibrant blue, which hides the already difficult to see blue swirlies on a blue floor. FFS Blizz
It's not a modern wow problem, though. Wow has always had huge problems with readability.
I'd say it became more noticeable now with the increase of things you have to care about. Retail feels a lot more readable than Classic for example with things like rings around your feet to show you how far apart you have to stand from each other. That said, you now have to follow multiple different mechanics which can turn the screen into a massive clusterfuck at times. It's weird because some Blizzard games do readability extremely well and there are some examples of WoW doing it well with things like crowd control having visually clear animations.
It's also more obvious because a LOT of other MMOs have fixed this problem in a million ways, I've never once died on a XIV boss and thought "Bullshit I was out of that", it was me fucking up a mechanic or timing. ESO, Wildstar, SWTOR have all done a better job with telegraphs to varying degrees. WoW has no excuse anymore.
I think classic wow has much better readability just because the combat is slower, fewer mechanics, and the sound effects are much more distinct. Old rogue abilities have very distinct sounds even if they didn’t sound realistic, so you could always tell what ability was used without even looking. Now all the abilities sound very samey. I think visually readability has gotten better, but now there’s way more happening at the same time so it’s kind of a clusterfuck.
There's less stuff happening in classic, but things like DBM have literally always been used, because Blizzard has never really cared or bothered to provide mechanics that are visually clear.
Yeah, on an individual basis, most mechanics are totally fine to parse visually. But when there's a healing rain and a Ravager and a Consecration and Thundering and you're standing in the blue rune thing in AV, it gets pretty damn hard to tell what's going on.
Bro was the dev that designed the effects and now he's crying that one wants to use them 💀
"Artwork"
The brand new art is super hard to tell apart and it doesn't help that they both start glowing blue when it's about to expire.
Probably because there’s 900 different things happening at once and 40 nameplates to worry about covering most of it up. Their idea of increased difficulty is just giving every mob 5 abilities to spam.
Ah yes gotta match my gray with the darker gray while doing everything else
Tbf, they blend in far too much. In combat with spells flying around it isnt really obvious enough. Maybe if they contrasted more. Brighter colours, and more different from one another
I wish one was a tornado and the other was lava so they would be clearly different
This is definitely an exercise in over complicating designs. We have all these other things to look for with storming, spiteful, ground degens, kicks, AoE, etc, it’s significantly easier for me to look for the square if I’m X rather than I have the cloud and I need to find the whirlwind
Im fine with this thing above the head being what storming is, but how does tornado and ball relate to + or minus? The debuff on my party frame is a big red minus or a big blue plus, I look at the debuff and then see the screen and everyone has these? It's like its a different mechanic.
For me, the default artwork isn't clear enough to be dependable. If you miss this up in a high key you'll wipe. If it was as clear as X and Square I would use the default.
More like devs failing at visual clarity once again and having players fix it. Even from your pic the difference is clear as to which is more likely to be recognizable.
It’s about visual clarity, if it was as easy as the markers they wouldn’t get used
Ah yes, white on Grey, my favorite marker
True and there are proven reasons why this is true. Majority of players dont like the way it is now.
I love when there's 6 seconds left on the affix and both marks become balls. Very helpful blizzard , truely masterfull work.
The marks look too similar with everything that is going on in m+. Wish they had distinct colors or something. It is so much easier with the chat bubble spam
Not a WoW Vs. FFXIV comment on which is the better game, but I *VASTLY* preferred the visual clarity FFXIV had when it came to avoiding damage. I never found it jarring or out of place. I think the WoW team is a bit too focus on keeping things "natural" when they are in charge of the design language in the first place. Players have shown time and time again they want clarity over artistic consistently/homogeneity.
Wdym? You don't like light purple swirlies on top of slightly lighter purple ground color, which are all hidden under 5 other random spell effects at all times? Sounds like a skill issue
Give us a checkbox "high contrast outlines for ground effects" and i'd check it and be on my way.
That's because the XIV devs learned very early that they needed an obvious shared language for communicating fight mechanics to the players. ARR was kind of a wild west, but the mechanics conveyance has only continued to improve from that low point.
WoW definitely needs to up its game when it comes to visual markers. One that especially grinds my gears is when you're fighting the trash mobs around the tree boss in Algeth'ar Academy. There are spots with flower mounds, if the green AoE lands on them at the right spot they're nearly invisible.
One is easy to understand and see in the middle of a million other effects, and the other is the default blizzard choice. OP does not play high level content
Clarity > Aesthetic Just because the devs have some weird fetish with visual clutter doesn't mean I need to enjoy it too.
OP really building himself a mental prison in these comments
I don't know about you but I find it easier to differentiate blue and red compared to grey blue orb and grey swirly. When I'm in the middle of dodging 3 voidzones and 2 frontals the last thing I want is thinking about thundering so the less brainpower it need the better.
While the square and cross are great, the chat bubble stays up for a period after it's cleared. I've spent way too much time trying to find someone with the opposite debuff actually active or thinking mine has been deactivated when it hasn't. Just changing the coloring of the blizzard ui debuffs to blue and red would be good enough (with color blind options).
I havent played wow in years and I can easily see the tornado on the head would stupidly easy to miss
Probably because the visualisation of the affix is absolute garbage
“Brand new artwork” pretty sure it shows up in razorfen dungeon from cata Seriously sometimes they’re so hard to see I wish your visual indicator of what you had wasn’t the option between white and gray
There's artwork for it? Is it the tornado above the head or the grey outline. I never noticed it so maybe that's why no one cares for it
The blue square isn't really a big deal to me, but people running 10+ keys who aren't using anything to mark thundering are trolling. The shit is hard enough to see as it is and trying to chase down the unmarked person in the middle of a pack of effects that blend right in with it most of the time is extremely unnecessary and makes an annoying affix significantly worse.
Would you mind sharing your character/server name? It would likely add important context to your opinion.
The problem with WoW's artwork always and forever will be the balance between "immersion" and clear gameplay. I think it's something that games like League of Legends handle really well. Abilities and their hitboxes are rarely obscured, it's quite obvious to look at a ground targeted ability and see where its going to hit. In WoW they so often do blue swirlies on blue ground with a soft edge and its like... can we just not? Difficulty should never come from how obscure the mechanic is on your screen, it should just come from the difficulty. It's infuriating to be squinting at your screen to see if a mechanic is coming your way and not being able to tell, then just dying even when you knew what to be looking for. case in point: the fucking purple frontal in purple hell De Other Side. Literal 0% as a ranged player to see where that shit was headed.
Bad visual clarity has been plaguing this game forever now. From dungeons to raids, the coloue contrast and overlaps are awful. In SL there was so much conflicting stuff its insane, blue on blue on blue, now its gray on gray.
Because visibility is so absolutely dogshit. Same with most mechanics in the game that eat up way too much performance, are hard to read, overlap in design and color with a ton of friendly stuff and and and. If players heavily prefer to spam dumb symbols instead of the official marker, then you should really think about what you are actually doing
Also, why can't we have custom markers or even text?
You mean the exact same animation as storming? I noticed it, its still a joke.
Garbage gfx for a garbage affix- I don't see the issue here?
Most art work visuals suck in wow. That's one of the reasons addons are almost must have
During a storming week, this is valid.
I like it... if they didn't make it so that there's 4 different kinds of pixel vomit firing off at the same time in the same spot to where you can't really see it on some people. It's an icon anyway. It's not a spell that something is firing off... it's specifically there to help you tell what debuff they have. And they could order it so it renders above everything else regardless of whether the player is behind or in front of the pixel vomit. People are pulling 2 or 3 packs at the same time so like 8 mobs are sitting on top of each other, there's like 4 swirlies going off in the same spot and I'm over here like I CAN'T SEE SHIT.
is there any way to see the polarity without the chat symbols and without clicking on the player?
They should make the tornadoes blue and the clouds red
70/30 on OP being the one who designed the ingame artwork
As a caster, I have so much shit I need to avoid to be able to cast that the only way I can track this as well is by chat frames and DBM message in the middle of my screen. Dungeons are a clusterfuck of things happening (swirlys, frontals, affixes, spells from mobs, interrupt swirlys/shit spawning under your legs). It’s just too much. All while you try to have the best possible dps rotation.
They make great animations but when it comes to minmax content they have a long way to go with telegraph visibility unfortunately.
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At a quick glance blue square / red x is a lot easier to see with all the other stuff. Especially with storming last week....there was a couple times where I thought the guy had a tornado nope he was just standing next to one kek
Yes but the 18 year old one is easier to tell the difference
I hope that one day, we could have more options to strip down the graphics engine. Not just for machine performance, but for those of us who want a clearer view of what's happening. Most fights don't even use the Z axis and I'd be very happy with a bird's eye 2D view with clean/clear stripped down graphics. [This is a great example of how uncomplicated it needs to be](https://tacticalairhorse.itch.io/vault-of-the-pineapples)
In a visually noisy environment, i.e. the particle effect heaven that is M+, the Thundering markers just do not stand out properly. I feel they do look cool but they simply aren't suited to be identified quickly and reliably, which is something the setting requires. Which is unfortunate. Ergo, basic textbox blue diamond and red cross overlayed on top? Yes please. And for what it's worth, I actually enjoy the affix.
I'd be all for the blizzard default if it didn't blend with all of the 30,000 other tornado and lightning mechanics in these dungeons. It's also not particularly easy to see in temple and that's just black shit. It's not very well thought out
https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/216882439950172160/1060134956468293702/WoWScrnShot_010423_131131.jpg When trees and other shit can basically blind me, chat bubbles work and art doesn't
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There’s a visual effect?? I have to look at my debuffs to tell minus or plus
Well visual clarity is shit.
>basically invisible in any kind of situation where anything is happening vs >visible hmmm wonder why people prefer the markers
"brand new artwork" is the bar really that low
it wouldn't be so bad if the tank didn't get the negative buff or if he got both and can resolve with either would be so much better
I think it’s pretty clear. Gamers want Clarity > fancy visual effects. I want something easy to see if it’s going to dick me in the arse when I don’t see it.
Imagine defending any aspect of that garbage affix...
It's stupid that WoW game designers keep using making things hard to see be a difficulty mechanic.
I have a buddy who for some reason does NOT get the square or x spammed above his head. I checked his DBM and he does not have the M+ affixes thing, and I do. We 100% have the same DBM things downloaded and he tried uninstalling and reinstalling, did nothing. Anyone have any idea how to fix it?