Mods

[Zarathustra]

World of Warcraft leaves plenty of room open for modification, spanning from UI changes to macros and quasi-programs that run ingame. Recently while raiding an instance there was a Paladin who announced anyone needing a particular Blessing should just whisper him and he'd take care of it. Fair enough, I thought. It's nice to see someone stepping out to be helpful, especially when you're trying to work together on something like that. A few minutes later he commented on how it was automatic; a mod that reacted to whispers and cast the appropriate spell on the person whispering.

Maybe I'm alone on this one, but that left a bad taste in my mouth. The more I look into the mods available, the less and less I see a need for actual gameplay. The "Decursive" mod seems to take things even further, where at the push of a button one can search his party, then raid, and dispell a status ailment he didn't even know was present.

With these sorts of text-triggered castings, I could see synergistic mods created where one person may whisper for a heal at a certain percent of his life, and the healer will automatically cast upon them. The possibilities go on and on, and in my view the result is less of a focus on actual gameplay skill and more a question of which mods have been downloaded and installed.

I do not like that notion.

The lesser use of macros to announce a spell or assist the MT... those I can not only live with but do use to great effect. It only makes sense to simplify things. But at what point are we destroying gameplay with automatic actions for the sake of greater power/efficacy? At one point does the realm of healers shift from praise of those on top of their game, to an expectance that they will be using these mods to supplement skill? What happens when "Heal Bots" truly become bots, joining their friend Pindle?

Personally, the distaste I've found has caused me to eschew any of these types of mods. I'd like to hear thoughts of other Lurkers on this one, especially given the general feel towards 3rd-party programs (to which I'd say these border dangerously close). Simply: How far is too far?

[Brista]

In Diablo 2 the main mod was maphack and was bannable cheating

Here it seems that the games company has simply changed the rules

You can object to mods but unless you group with like-minded people you'll always be playing with people who use them. I'm not terribly fond of the mod that tracks what spells your opponent is using as it makes Feign Death much less useful.

Still I think we just have to adapt. Whether you personally use them or not is a matter of taste

On the plus side I don't think these "lazy man" type mods help that much. A good player will want to control his/her mana use not have Blessings etc cast automatically, possibly at inconvenient moments. I imagine this mod is set not to start casting during combat but I can imagine a sequence of Mod triggers - main tank pulls with arrow - blessing is cast, pulling aggro off the tank. I don't think the really serious end-game players will put up with that

[Olon97]

With these sorts of text-triggered castings, I could see synergistic mods created where one person may whisper for a heal at a certain percent of his life, and the healer will automatically cast upon them.  The possibilities go on and on, and in my view the result is less of a focus on actual gameplay skill and more a question of which mods have been downloaded and installed.

There is no automatic cast capacity in the UI system. Every single spell/ability must have a corresponding keypress/mouseclick. At most a healer could spam a "do what other people tell me to do" button which usually does nothing but if there has been a recent whisper triggers a heal, but that wouldn't be very interesting for the healers (and as someone who gets a lot of healing an annoying extra thing to worry about - I'd rather trust my healer to watch my health bar).

A mod that is probably as close to "over the line" as is possible with WoW's UI system is DefendYourself. Regularly keeps you in combat, but does not allow you to get into combat with CCd mobs. Basically replaces the need for a certain amount of alertness...

[russ]

For a long time I was strongly against any sort of program that did more than deliver information.

Then I went into an instance, a Lower BRS run, with another Druid, wearing full Wildheart, who relied on a 'botmod', the sort of thing that goes through all potential heals and chooses the rank that best fits the person's current state of health. By the time we were at the trolls, he had died four times, used up twice the amount of water I had, and in general made a fool of himself. I asked him to turn off the mod and secondary heal, and that was the last time he died that run. When I railed about people who use those crutches while waiting for our warrior to get back, a mage from in my guild responded, asking me what the difference was between that and GypsyMod, which gives me the exact numbers of a person's health, something I bragged about earlier that day as helping me heal. It's hard to draw a fair line.

Now I'm a little more open to what other people use, although I will discourage them from using something overly easy-mode unless there are no other alternatives. I doubt I will ever be able to talk my guild's priests out of using CTmod's Decursive-like functionality - they've simply grown to the point they can't really imagine dealing with encounters like Sulfurion or Lucifron or even Flamelords without easy dispelling. I know warriors that rely on complex weapon-switching macros that maximize how much aggro they can create while keeping a shield up for most enemy hits. And I myself introduced a macro into my guild that prevents druids from innervating any avatar that doesn't have a mana supply, although I've yet to use that macro in an instance. All of the Disc priests in my guild run a mod similar to that paladin's, which reacts to queries for Divine Spirit.

I still avoid the more invasive mods, using CT_raidassist, CT_timer, and Gypsymod Unitbars, but I believe other people should have a right to choose if they want to use crutches, although occasionally I'll yell at priests who take Soul Burn off rogues before they get it off me, or a fellow druid who ends up taking Ghennas's Curse off a rogue while it's still on the tank.

My feeling is that Blizzard will (and has in the past, as the lack of 500+ questions shows) remove any particularly destructive functionality from the UI mod system. Anything left while either be acceptable or come with a high enough price that it won't define a healer... hopefully.