Is playing without addons viable?

[Deleted]

Or the generic "bomb over the head" thing they've used quite a lot the last couple expansions.

That might be a bit hard to see if all have similar bombs; though it could be easy if they start with a different color for a couple of seconds. e.g. green for the one that will explode last.

[Kithelle]

Imma have to disagree here a bit. One of the best Rogue players we had said he didn't use any add-ons, particularly DBM has he felt that was having the game play for him. He was a solid player, a solid DPS and someone you could depend on to do the call when you made the calls. One of his famed achievements was during the ICC days on Saurfang, he successfully vanished before getting the mark put on him, we have other who have refused to run many of the popular add-ons, like DBM for the same reason. I've looked at their screenshots during raid and wonder how they do it, because I'd be fairly worthless without add-ons playing for me.

Maybe for Mythic raiding especially cutting edge you need certain add-ons. for for normal raiding and Heroic dungeons, if you can't play without add-ons, then something else is wrong.

Now if you want to say viable means achieving 99% of your potential I guess we could agree, but what about people who play with every add-ons required and still fail to achieve that?

Exactly...just because you'd feel fairly worthless without mods doesn't mean that everyone is!

[Felfaadaern Darkterror]

Some addons are like transmog: they change the game to suit your aesthetics and style.

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You could as easily ask: Is playing without macros viable? And get most of the same answers.

[PragmaticGamer]

Of course. Thanks for bringing solid content to the conversation.

Sorry, I was trying to parse what add-ons had to do with queues. As in, an add-on that bumped you up in a dungeon queue, and I was pretty darn sure that wasn't possible.

[ComputerNerd]

Is it possible ?
Yes - viable has another meaning altogether.
Being possible does not mean definitively mean viable for everyone.

[Deleted]

Cant really imagine playing WoW without Bartender and Weak Auras anymore.
Would have to constantly keep track of the corners of my monitor without this 2 addons... instead of watching my character to not stand in fire, or the actual world in general.

[Deleted]

One does not simply pull without a timer!

[Joodoc]

Something to keep in mind, a lot of the bleeding edge mythic raiding don't really have addon support, least not DBM/Big Wig, because the fights aren't known well enough for long enough to put all that into an addon for them to use. Thus, it is all possible without addons, just harder. You have to actually read the debuffs, learn what they do, and watch for them. You need to learn WHY you taunt, not just taunt when an addon tells you to.

[Darkwind]

Mythic Archimonde without the mark of the legion addon would be a total nightmare, you'd have to get 4 groups into the right position within a few seconds without knowing who will be chosen to be at each mark. It's probably doable but the % of players completing the content would be even lower.

We do it every kill, the ads on stopped working for half our raiders. Most can do it based off their group now. Other needs a weak aura, but it is doable.

On another note as a tank and raid leader I would be severely screwed without half my addons, just the ability to see what heart cool downs are available and that before we pull everyone is fed and buffed are just 2 QoL things I really would struggle without.

Keeping track of cooldowns and debuffs is also a huge need when you need to tank swap or call for externals.

Mainly I use addons to make my UI prettier, I like a clean UI

[ComputerNerd]

Something to keep in mind, a lot of the bleeding edge mythic raiding don't really have addon support, least not DBM/Big Wig, because the fights aren't known well enough for long enough to put all that into an addon for them to use. Thus, it is all possible without addons, just harder. You have to actually read the debuffs, learn what they do, and watch for them. You need to learn WHY you taunt, not just taunt when an addon tells you to.

And it is a rather narrow-minded view assuming that is all addons do, tell you what to do and when.
The default UI sucks for presenting relevant information.
It simply shows all of it, which some people are more adept at filtering.
As long as a player makes the decision for themselves, it shouldn't matter if they use an addon to display what they want to see, and what they don't want to.

[Dug]

Only addon I see as necessary is DBM, everything else is just fluff that you can manage on your own but they're nice QoL improvements so I'll use them anyways. My UI is pretty bare bones though, DBM, Bartender and Bagnon.

[ReleaseDay]

Define "viable" I'd say no, even at low-tier casual fucking questing. At high-end pve or pvp, obv.

[Yoshimiko]

It's completely viable. You better be better than your average player, though. Most of them lean on DBM like the worlds strongest crutch. It's not required but it can certainly help you along, especially if you're bad at handling mechanics already. That's DPS, though. For Tanks and Healers going into Mythic...I honestly feel DBM downright required. Healers so they know when to use their raid cooldowns, tanks so they know what to save their mitigations for.

Otherwise you just memorize the fight start to finish. That's fine too.

I personally can't live without Event Horizon, at this point. I love that addon. A DPS meter is really nice so I can see what I'm messing up / my dps break down / help other raiders along with their low dps / etc. Ovale's nice for learning new specs. NPCScan for rare hunting and altaholic for knowing how much gold I have.

[Deleted]

We do it every kill

No you don't if your addons put raid icons on the debuffed players. The raid icons aren't assigned randomly. It is important to explode in a convenient order and that's not easy to wing it without icons on the debuffed players.

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Something to keep in mind, a lot of the bleeding edge mythic raiding don't really have addon support, least not DBM/Big Wig, because the fights aren't known well enough for long enough to put all that into an addon for them to use. Thus, it is all possible without addons, just harder. You have to actually read the debuffs, learn what they do, and watch for them. You need to learn WHY you taunt, not just taunt when an addon tells you to.

It's important to understand how much information exists from the animations and the audio of the game. You don't need to actually read your debuffs or the debuffs of the boss sometimes. Sometimes you can just listen or watch.

That being said there are mechanics with very low audio or visual feedback or not at all and those can use addons very clearly, and that's Bliz' responsibility.

[Mhyroth]

Viable for ?
It depends what kind of player you are and how extensive your skillset is.

[Acelius]

Of course it is. You can do anything in the game perfectly fine without add-ons, save for maybe world first raid kills. If someone tells you that you absolutely need addons otherwise the game is unplayable, you know they're a bad player.

Granted alot of addons makes your life easier on alot of areas but they are nowhere near mandatory.

[Arborus]

Something to keep in mind, a lot of the bleeding edge mythic raiding don't really have addon support, least not DBM/Big Wig, because the fights aren't known well enough for long enough to put all that into an addon for them to use. Thus, it is all possible without addons, just harder. You have to actually read the debuffs, learn what they do, and watch for them. You need to learn WHY you taunt, not just taunt when an addon tells you to.

It's quite easy to build WeakAuras as stand in boss mods, not to mention that BigWigs and DBM both use PTR/Beta extensively to build as much as possible before the raids are even released- and it isn't exactly hard to add your own timers to BigWigs.

[tapczan100]

I llied to my guild about having DBM as a main tank, we did fine.

[Arborus]

I llied to my guild about having DBM as a main tank, we did fine.

Luckily, tank mechanics are stupid-proof.