More boss mechanics are being restricted from WeakAura usage, but how big of a deal is it, really?

Blizzard is expanding upon its promise to restrict what World of Warcraft players can do with WeakAuras.

On the WoW Patch 10.2 public test realm, more boss abilities in the game’s next raid—Amirdrassil, the Dream’s Hope—have been labeled as “private auras,” meaning their mechanics cannot be picked up and resolved by the popular raiding addon known as WeakAuras.

WeakAuras are visual aids that allow WoW players to dive into the game’s source code and heavily customize their UI during a raid encounter, most commonly through visual and audio cues. Traditionally, WeakAuras has been used in WoW as a tool to simplify raid mechanics and make some of the toughest sections of boss fights easier to topple.

Private auras, though, restrict the level of access that players and addon creators have and make it so that you’ll have to play through mechanics with little to no outside assistance. In Amirdrassil, 20 boss abilities have been flagged as having private auras (so far), according to a recent report from WoW coverage site and database Wowhead. Among those 20 private auras, 12 of them are solely for Fyrakk, the final boss of the next raid.

The application of private auras, especially on the final boss WOW WotLK Gold of Amirdrassil, will add an extra layer of difficulty for raiders across all of the game’s skill levels. Many top-end WoW raiders use WeakAuras to get ahead of the pack during the Race to World First event, while everyday players use the addon in their raids in an effort to promote better coordination in larger raid groups. Some top-end guilds even employ assistants who have specialized skills in creating WeakAuras, as the correct use of the addon can potentially swing the Mythic raid race in one team’s favor over another.

On the change, defending world first raid leader Max “Maximum” Smith of Team Liquid argued on Twitter that the heavy addition of private auras in Amirdrassil will have “no impact” on the flow of the race and that forcing the player base to rely less on WeakAuras in their raids is actually “a good thing.”

With fewer external resources at the ready, it’s likely that WoW Classic Gold teams will have to adapt on the fly. Potentially, the upcoming Race to World First could take an extended amount of time, considering guilds will have to spend more hours working on difficult mechanics, especially during the latter half of the raid. However, if raid leaders like Maximum are calling the advantage that WeakAuras provide in certain situations “marginal,” there might just be nothing to worry about.

WeakAuras] that solve mechanics have also always been as a result of a failure of mechanical design, visual noise and inconsistent design language for mechanics, or requiring pixel-perfect camera lineups,” a WoW player named JC_Adventure said on Reddit. “I’m fine with them making mechanics be Private Auras, as long as they are visually clear WITHIN the context of the encounter visuals and not extra noise, and fun to organically engage with.”

WoW players should expect Amirdrassil to be the toughest of Dragonflight’s raids to date, as traditionally, Blizzard ramps up the difficulty with each passing raid through the course of an expansion. In Shadowlands, Sepulcher of the First Ones granted players a noticeable step up in difficulty to close out the expansion, while Ny’alotha, the final raid of Battle for Azeroth, was also a more difficult raid for the average player.

Amirdrassil, the final WoW Dragonflight raid of 2023, will be released on Nov. 14. Patch 10.2, titled Guardians of the Dream, will launch one week earlier on Nov. 7, with players having access to the patch’s open-world content before the instance opens its doors.