Nerfed Buttons

Hello,

I’m Raggok a.k.a Oggar a.k.a Oozo.  For my first post I decided to go easy and tackle a totally non-controversial topic:  Nerfed Buttons.

Nerfed Buttons is a popular Warhammer add-on that you can find on www.curse.com.  As to what Nerfed Buttons does, I’ll let one the creators handle that:

”’NerfedButtons”’ lets you define ”’prioritised”’ and ”’conditional”’ abilitiy lists for your hotbar slots. NerfedButtons will automatically ensure that the highest priority ability that passes its conditions is bound to the hotbar slot at any time.”

This is a very powerful tool.  You can prioritize a hotkey bind to do a back positional with a fallback of doing a nonpositional attack, for example.  You could priortize an ability like Sever Blessing and have it backed up with your standard attack.  Whenever your target acquires a blessing, you will automatically sever it without having to notice it, think about it, or react to it as long as you are spamming your main attack.  The add-on provides a scripting language which offers many (too many?) possibilities.  It will monitor stacking,  so you don’t overstack a debuff.  It will monitor whether your target has CC immunities, so you don’t waste a CC.  It will perform actions based upon your target’s health; based upon how much hate or grudge you have built up; based upon reactionary abilities that work off of parry or block; etc. etc.  The list goes on.  You could literally sit down and write a script that allows you to play using a single button.

But, is doing that in your best interest as a player?  Should add-ons like Nerfed Buttons (and Twister for Chosen/KoTBS) be disabled and banned?  I’d like to explore these questions in this article and give my own personal opinion.  Let’s look at a thread on Warhammer Alliance as it contains the most common opinions and arguments with regards to add-ons like NB.

http://www.warhammeralliance.com/forums/showthread.php?t=288692

Someone asks for help setting up an attack sequence for an ironbreaker using NB and gets this response.

“First:
Make sure you have the latest and greatest NerfedButtons.

Second:
Try these changes. I am typing them by hand, so hopefully I have not injected any syntax errors:

/nb add 2[Axe Toss]
[Shield of Reprisal]
[Binding Grudge];st:1:s:e:
[Stone Breaker];st:1:s:e:
[Inspiring Attack];st:1:s:p:
[Stubborn as Stone];cd:20;cm:45:+
[Guarded Attack];st:1:s:p:
[Vengeful Strike];st:1:s:p;cm:75:+

As I understand it, this *should* translate to:
1) Hit with Axe Toss if you are out of melee range.
2) Hit with Shield of Reprisal whenever it is active.
3) Hit with Binding Grudge and allow it to be applied once per enemy. If you switch targets and the enemy is not afflicted with Binding Grudge by *you*, you will hit them with this ability. If you switch back to your first target and this effect is still on the enemy, you will not hit them again with it.
4) Hit with Stone Breaker and allow it to be applied once per enemy.
5) Hit with Inspiring Attack, allow it to be self applied once.
6) Hit with Stubborn Blow if you are at or above 45 grudge. Since this ability lasts for 20 seconds, I put it on a forced 20 second cooldown.
7) Hit with Guarded Attack, allow it to be self applied once.
8 ) Hit with Vengeful Strike if you are at or above 75 grudge. Allow it to be self applied once.
9) Spam Heavy Blow until any conditions are met that will trigger the abilities in steps 1-8.

Third:
You may want to consider adding Juggernaut and Sever Blessing to the line up as well (similar to Shield of Reprisal).

I hope this helps, and happy hunting!”  – Raggnarok

The negative reaction is, of course, predictable.

“sad as hell that what in effect because of addons comes down to mashing one button or another..
hope they stop this crap in the future, its pathetic.” – Toza

“This add on is nothing but a crutch for bad players and should be removed asap.” -  Mikos

“It just too much of a macro for many players tastes. It goes beyond a crutch or a mod, to almost a cheat. It removes any skill or decision making.” - lysico

Yes, it can be used to remove decision making.  That is very accurate, but is that necessarily a good thing that needs to be banned because it gives someone an unfair advantage?  Someone who writes a long complicated script as given above is seriously handicapping themselves.  They will not be able to react to non-scripted events.  Nerfed Buttons is a very powerful tool, but someone who overuses it just ends up shooting themselves in the foot.  Take Witch Hunters, for example.  I fraps a lot of my fights and I’m amazed at how many WH screw themselves because they prioritize Confess! (disarm) on their main attack button.  They remove the decision-making process from themselves and end up disarming automatically whenever they parry.  Bad, bad, bad.  And here is an example why taken from a T3 frapsed combat log:

***** parried your [Slasha].

*****’s [Confess!] hits you for 215 damage. (108 mitigated)

*****’s [Repel Blasphemy] hits you for 151 damage. (76 mitigated)

Okay, so now all my attacks are going to be parried BUT, hey… I’m disarmed anyway.  This WH was using the Riposte tactic for added comedic value.  They totally screwed themselves by relying too much on Nerfed Buttons.  Now, does Nerfed Buttons give an advantage to someone who uses it wisely (which is to say: doesn’t overuse it) against someone who doesn’t use it at all.  Hell yes, you bet it does.  I am currently using Nerfed Buttons on my Choppa for two basic functions.  First, to make my keybinds more accessible and efficient.  Second, to perform standard repeated combinations so I can concentrate more on the fight than on my keyboard.  It changes as I try different things out, but I typically have an NB button that does my snare, bleed, armor debuff, and main attack.  I have another NB button that I use for my AoE attacks.  And, I have an NB button that I use for burst damage.  At the moment, it does Keep on Choppin followed by Weakling Killa.  Control and healing abilities like Sit Down!, Shrug It Off, and Furious Choppin are far too important to sequence with anything else.  From my point of view, Nerfed Buttons allows me to keep track of more important things such as my movement, my positioning, and what is going on around me.

 

Choppa is a pretty simple career when it comes to the number of abilities we have to juggle.  If Mythic decides to ban NB, I will adjust accordingly.  However, some tanks have to use 20+ abilities just to play at an acceptable level of effectiveness.  It’s a career like this where an add-on like Nerfed Buttons has more benefit to the player and the functionality it provides becomes more important to them.   It’s not uncommon to see a tank say that they will stop playing Warhammer if NB gets taken away from them.  The reason being is that managing so many abilities is not fun for them.  I have a 40 Chosen, so I understand where they are coming from.  Using all the abilities you should be using while trying to manually twist auras would only be fun to a masochist. 

“NB has been around since WAR beta (longer than most players) and to date is not considered to break any addon rules according to Mythic (don’t get Mythic mixed up with GOA here BTW…).

A GOA representative has made it clear they would like to ban it, but the last post on the jeaux online forums by GOA got quickly removed when players questioned the GOA community lead comments (probably due to voicing a non official opinion… you’ll may get the same in-game).

Yes, Mythic may decide to change their view on letting addons change abilities bound to hotbuttons and stop NB, Twister, DECA and other addons from working in future via a simple API change (back to playing whack-a-mole with 40+ buttons, what fun!). This may happen in 1.3 or it may not…

Either way there are people who like it and some that don’t. Obviously only the ones who don’t like it complain, but each to their own, all depends how you prefer to play the game. Fortunately most people in the past (including players from Mythic and WA) have quickly come to love the addon once they’ve tried it, realising it increases their enjoyment of the game.

Good luck all. We may be around post 1.3, we may not…. “  – URFUBAR, NB creator

Is Nerfed Buttons legal to use now?  Yes, it is.  Also, it’s free and anyone can use it.  However, there are many people out there who refuse to use third-party addons.  World of Warcraft went through a similar situation.  There were mods and macros which were far too powerful.  So, Blizzard took control and restricted how you could build your macros.  I think that Mythic should do the same (however they might not have the resources to do so).  I do think that some of the things you can do currently with Nerfed Buttons cross the line.  However, I also believe that there should be a way to script basic sequences to help manage keybinds and perform basic combinations.  WoW allows this, and IIRC DAoC even had a “backup ability” feature built into it’s UI.

Until a final decision is made, I will continue to use Nerfed Buttons in a limited fashion.

- Raggok/Oggar/Oozo

6 Comments

Comments RSS TrackBack Identifier URI