It raises the skill floor for those who use it minimally. Less buttons, less awkward octopi-hands needed to use all your skills. I use about 30 keybinds for skills instead of clicking around for things. 1-6, shift+1-6, qertyfg, shift+qertyfg, and f1-f4. That's two full 12 button bars + Morales, and it's still not enough to have all the options at my disposal. NB can add a few skills to the same button that turn 1-2-3 into 1-1-1, but it's only good for a specific situation. A few more skills for 4-5-6 that turns into 2-2-2, again, only for certain situations. So far, this is really basic skill combos that many other MMO's use effectively to reduce the number of bound keys. In the BW/Sorc example, trying to finish off a target and using your 3s cast for a large burst isn't going to work if it's preceded by your 1-2 combo before it. You need it on a separate key anyway.Toldavf wrote:I do wish they would ban this add on. It really takes allot of the skill out of the game.
Lots of skills are conditional, or wouldn't be used at every opportunity efficiently. Some things, like skills that only have a decent effect when used positionally are a pain in combat where you're not sure if your target is strafing so you get a back/side attack, where other skills require such positioning to even fire off. Those skills are poorly designed, and NB conditionals can alleviate their uselessness. Skills that are effectively useless when spammed are here as well, like your trusty Engineer spamming Acid Bomb, add a short internal cooldown and you no longer use it constantly.
The thing about NB that is troubling is the ability to codify high stress situations with the use of conditionals. It's difficult. There's some slightly above basic coding involved. People looking to use NB at this level are probably quite familiar with the game and would play at a relatively high level to begin with. Things like using detaunt as a high priority, but only when taking a burst of damage, or being targeted by specific spells. Using potions as a conditional to burst health at low levels, or popping an AP pot when your target is low hp to finish them off. Making Cleanse something automatic, especially effective with group cleanse abilities. These uses suck and take decision making out of the context of a skilled player.
If there were ways to strip some of the more advanced functions from NB without stripping all of them, Mythic probably would have done it. But throwing out some good things (raising the skill floor) because of some bad things (high skill players being even more efficient) wasn't a battle they wanted to fight. At one point they talked with the developer of NB and asked him to remove some functions, which he did. But the underlying server-side code wasn't changed. Anyone who understood LUA and NB enough could very well have coded them back in. To my knowledge, this hasn't happened because most skilled addon coders moved on to other games.
The reality of using NB, is that it's simply not 100% effective and it will miss skills, cast things when you don't want it to, put potions on cooldown, and pop long cooldown abilities when it's not actually necessary. The UI in WAR is just not responsive enough at times to rely on it. There's also the factor of in-game positioning, teamwork, and knowing when to push or pull back that using NB as a crutch to reach a decent level will never begin to teach. Once you understand the limitations you're imposing on yourself, it's less important to codify every ideal step, and go back to largely playing reactively to specific situations.
