Aloha Goodbye 🤙

With the Midnight pre-patch on the horizon, the time has come to say goodbye. Hekili development has officially ended and there will be no future releases. I've been proud to help people learn the game, improve their damage throughput, adapt to changes, and analyze their performance. The philosophy shift at Blizzard in regard to combat addons means this project must come to an end.

Hekili will not work when the API changes go live with 12.0. This outcome is the intent of Blizzard's changes to the Warcraft user interface and API. Combat addons cannot see and interpret combat-related data when Midnight releases.

If you are looking for alternatives, Blizzard's Combat Assisted Highlight and One-Button Rotation are available and may meet your needs. Though their design goals are different from mine, I hope that these tools serve you well, especially those of you who used Hekili to overcome barriers to accessibility.

Midnight also includes a great number of changes to class design. Those changes appear aimed at reducing the number of factors you have to consider when deciding which action to take. I encourage you to approach these changes with an open mind, whether you try them now in the beta or wait for the pre-patch to go live.

Patrons: I will close this Patreon before December 1 in order to prevent you from being charged. Mahalo for your years of support.

Impact

November 18 marks twelve years since Hekili was first shared on CurseForge. It has had 61 million downloads across hundreds of releases, with recent files showing anywhere from 200,000 to 400,000 downloads. I haven't totaled the downloads from WoW Interface, Wago, and WowUp, but let's hope they account for 8 million more. (Nice.)

I'm not sure if people realize that, aside from a few initial shares and status updates for expansion updates, I've never really promoted Hekili anywhere. This means that the growth and (moderate) popularity is largely based on word of mouth and a few weird YouTube videos.

In terms of overall reach, my goal was that Hekili could be available to those who were interested, and anyone else would be unbothered.

Thank You

Ultimately, while I have many different feelings about the end of this project, the strongest feeling is gratitude.

• I am grateful for World of Warcraft itself; I'm especially thankful that it was there for me way back when I was laid off and broke and needed to fill the time between job applications with something social and exciting and affordable.

• I am grateful to Blizzard for creating the sandbox that made addon development possible, where I could build something to help people perform better, adapt to changes, analyze their performance, overcome barriers to accessibility, and get Mage Tower appearances on their alts.

• I am grateful to @WarcraftDevs for confirming that I am handsome and special person as of March 24, 2017.

  

• I am grateful for the often-thankless work of a huge number of theorycrafters in the WoW community. Some of you reached out to me with suggestions and guidance. Others answered complicated questions with careful and detailed answers. Many contributed through the work they were already sharing via SimulationCraft, Icy-Veins, Wowhead, on class Discords, and elsewhere.

  • Special shoutouts go to Wordup, Rusah, Purge (Surge?), Gengi, and Kaylee.

• I am grateful for all the infrastructure that made it possible to share my work, including CurseForge, Wago, WoW Interface, and WowUp.

• I am grateful to the contributors who volunteered their time and effort.

  • Syrif, you stepped up to take care of some of the most critical work for the launch of The War Within. You dug deep into the addon's inner workings and improved performance across the board. If you hadn't stepped up, I might still be working on releasing Hekili for 11.0.

  • Nerien, you raised the standard for Blood DKs with your contributions and your customized priority lists. You've also been a calm and thoughtful sounding board for ideas and helped steer many design decisions.

  • Kyatastrophe, you've been a true friend for a decade now. Thank you for effectively running my Discord so I could focus on development, and several holiday dinners.

• I am grateful to many other developers who helped me to learn Lua and the WoW API, provided constructive critique, and helped me stay on track. In that vein, special thanks go to Stanzilla, Infus, Buds, asakawa, rivers, and even Spaten or Satron (whether you are one person or two).

• I am grateful to the guilds with whom I've raided over the years, including Fancy Lads, Knights of Arcadia, Turbo Cyborg Ninjas, Tyrannosaurus Rekt, Seraph, Seaghyn, Months Behind, Karma Horde, and Cinder and Ash. Some of y'all were beta testing the addon and didn't even know it.

  • Also, I was never in your guild, but HEKILI OR KICK on Ragnaros has some stuff to figure out in the near future. Thanks for the unexpected laugh when I landed in your M+ group.

Patrons

I hope I can convey my deep appreciation for the Patrons and other donors over the years. It took a great deal of encouragement for me to even start a Patreon, and I never expected the generous support that has been provided. When I reached a point where I needed support to offset the lost wages from taking time off for development work, y'all showed up to cover that gap and even made it possible to share some support with other key contributors. Mahalo.

Tacodog

Finally, thank you to my dog. You wore a taco costume long enough to get one photo, and you created a whole online persona for me and an identity for my work. You helped me start my days with your needs and your demands. You kicked me out of your room (my office!) if I stayed up too late coding. You had a lot of things to say, and I didn't understand all of it, but I assume they were mostly grievances. I hope I resolved most of them for you. I miss you.

The real tacodog, my muse, who left us in January of 2025.

To anyone still reading, I hope you find an interesting challenge and spend 12 years of your life working to overcome it. It is rewarding, even if all good things must come to an end.

Aloha.