The Last Boss of Midnight's First Tier Shows Off Blizzard's New Encounter Design

Posted 2025/11/23 at 12:37 PM by Squishei

In a World Without Addonstalked about the addon disarmamentA Memory MechanicHeroicOn Mythicsame notesIs it Fair?Affordancethis interview

Taylor Sanders

We call this concept “affordance’’. So when a mechanic goes out, we want to make sure that players have not only the right amount of time but the right amount of visual and audio feedback in order to respond to a mechanic.a response to a community council post

This is a cool term and I like it, but I want to expand a bit and talk about even more factors that we think about when determining if a mechanic is appropriate to ask players to do at a given difficulty, such as:
• How complex is the mechanic?
• How much affordance does the mechanic have? (basically a function of how clear it is + how much time you’re given to react)
• How severe is the punishment for failure, and is it binary or granular?To use a few Shadowlands mechanics as examples:Smoldering Ire (Denathrius)
• Low complexity
• High affordance
• Outright ignoring it is an instant wipe, but failure is granular (if you only miss 20% the damage is likely survivable)Spiked Floor (Painsmith)
• Low complexity
• Medium affordance
• Failure is binary (die if you get hit), but it only affects one person so a few mistakes can be OKLoom of Fates (Fatescribe)
• High complexity
• High affordance
• Failure is binary and instantly wipes the raid.Note that this is simplifying a bit and doesn’t account for “what else is competing for your attention while this mechanic is happening?”, but it’s still a useful model to help evaluate the impact a mechanic has on a fight.When it comes to Loom of Fates, I wonder if you’d feel less like addons are a requirement if one or both of the following were true:
• Fewer things competing for your attention during the mechanic (avoidable elements, adds, etc)
• More granular penalty for failure (ex: a single mistake resulted in a “survivable with all your raid CDs” level of damage, as opposed to a wipe)Ultimately what I’m getting at here is that “high complexity” is a design space that allows us to do some pretty cool and thematic stuff, and I’d like to find ways for us to continue doing things in this space while keeping them accessible. To be clear: We make “high complexity” mechanics not because we feel pressure to keep up with addons, but because doing so allows us to create more unique bosses.

Is This Mechanic Fair?

Every ~1.5 seconds, a new shape is shown.

2 seconds later, the shapes are spawns on 4 players.

8 seconds later, L'ura starts rotating the laser beam.

The laser beam takes 3 additional seconds for a full rotation.

Medium complexity
This mechanic is not as easy to explain as other mechanics, but not on the level of complexity of Fatescribe rings

Players are given 6 seconds to identify the pattern, and type it out in chat (if needed), and 8 additional seconds to line up correctly.

Why Couldn't Blizzard Do This Previously?

Ion Hazzikotas

Guilds—or even pickup groups—commonly require the use of specific addons for mid-combat coordination. While we have never designed FOR addons, in the sense of making a specific encounter or class mechanic with the intent that players would write addons to solve a given puzzle, we have inevitably had to design AROUND them for the past several expansions. We have to accept that even in non-cutting-edge content, a majority of players will turn to any available tools to make things easier.

Someone would design a WeakAura with buttons that one player could click on to enter the order order of the shapes.

You would put down 4 markers around the boss in a specific order.

The Weakaura would then tell the marked players which marker specifically to stand on in text and Text-to-Speech.

then just being told by a computer where to stand

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Comment by DaugenI'm all for more creative encounters like this one. If it means sacrificing weakauras then so be itComment by BuffFuryLooks kinda easy if you ask me, But i guess this is on normal. SO heroic easy to since normal and heroic is normaly a joke and mythic with the nerds there never touch grass i give it 2 weeks and the have done it on mythic -__-Comment by kaizuimWaiting for the people who are gonna complain that addons can't play the game for them anymore

Poor guys will have to learn how to play on their own :(Comment by Vinaya01This is also a perfect example of how all Blizzard had to do was stop addons from talking to each other to get the impact they wanted. No addon comms and private auras would have done precisely the same thing with much, much less collateral damage.Comment by xxhzPeople still struggle to press an extra action button on plexus sentinal...think ill be skipping pugging this boss for a while xD

Waiting for the people who are gonna complain that addons can't play the game for them anymore

Poor guys will have to learn how to play on their own :(Comment by frostfizzisWhat new philosophy? They still making shiii the same as before.. the amount of castors sending out bolts is insane... without omnicd, that shi is so dumb...Comment by frostfizzisAlso, just blatantly admitting addons weren't what made them create such garbage raid encounters... good move ionComment by WillowabWhat new philosophy? They still making shiii the same as before.. the amount of castors sending out bolts is insane... without omnicd, that shi is so dumb...Comment by KarthusTeemoThis is also a perfect example of how all Blizzard had to do was stop addons from talking to each other to get the impact they wanted. No addon comms and private auras would have done precisely the same thing with much, much less collateral damage.Comment by Naraka33The symbols are so ugly. I can barely figure out what they are. Is that a moon or a circle?Comment by SojirohSo they’re doing Ff14 style mechanics now?Comment by RellyneThis is also a perfect example of how all Blizzard had to do was stop addons from talking to each other to get the impact they wanted. No addon comms and private auras would have done precisely the same thing with much, much less collateral damage.Comment by YukiOokamiThis look so fun! I’m super excited to try this mechanic :DComment by RellyneThis is also a perfect example of how all Blizzard had to do was stop addons from talking to each other to get the impact they wanted. No addon comms and private auras would have done precisely the same thing with much, much less collateral damage.Comment by drdoomt3they could have done this the entire time. nothing was stopping them at all.Comment by nicocpossDalaran's spoiler all over again :)Comment by K3ndo"and type it out in chat (if needed) "

Yeah right. I'll stop healing/dpsing/tanking just to type stuff midfight. Sure. xDComment by MosurNothern Sky auf die 1!Comment by CrossarchOk, this actually looks cool ngl. I love the idea of a raid-wide memory game where 4 random people are selected to play with good time window to play it out. But this could co-exist with the addons easily. I can, for example, as shotcaller remember the symbols and repeat them out loud like in the video anyway, or use floor markers to set up the order and people to take them with similar-shaped marks. So one person will play for the rest, or WA plays for the rest doesn't really change much, and doesn't devalue how good and unique the mechanic is - some people needed and will still need vocal/visual assistance to properly play out the mechanic with addons, or without them.Comment by KetsutoroWaiting for the people who are gonna complain that addons can't play the game for them anymore

Poor guys will have to learn how to play on their own :(

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