Does anyone actually learn raid content on thier own and without using add ons

[Triggered Fridgekin]

I find it ironic when some commentators on youtube/streams are like 'l2p noob' meanwhile half their screen is dedicated to show them how to play. It becomes more of a 'l2curse'.

Blizzard should make a council-boss which breaks addons for the fight and has as many random abilities as a boss loot table in heroic 5s with limited attempts.

[Daerio]

I am not disparaging them at all I am saying they are not needed. We can all down the content without them, it would just take a lot longer. I never claimed to not use them. Also add ons are not cheating. The are endorsed by Blizzard. Blizzard breaks the ones that are cheating and only 1 comes to mind.

disparaging
expressing the opinion that something is of little worth; derogatory.

You absolutely were doing that, and the only issue I have with your position is the hypocrisy. Cheating is also in quotes for a reason.

[SirBeef]

You absolutely were doing that, and the only issue I have with your position is the hypocrisy. Cheating is also in quotes for a reason.

Again show me where I said they were of little worth. I have stated they are not necessary to clear content. Add ons allow players to do things more efficiently and get through encounter more quickly. They have immense value, but are not required. Hardly disparaging.

[Kosmonaut]

Outside of a few guilds in Beta, do any guilds out there try to raid without using addons and without reading spoilers and watching videos of all the content before they try to raid during a new tier?

How does raiding can feel like any sense of accomplishment when you use a dozen addons that take away any sort of situational awareness that you would need to have or when you already know exactly what to expect and do for every encounter without learning it on your own developing your own strategies?

Is raiding only about the end result and how fast you can get there and have nothing to do with the journey to get there?

When you get 100% on your Math, English, Bio, Chemistry tests, how do you feel accomplished without having taught yourself Calculus or learned on your own how to speak proper English, or learned the cellular make-up of the human body?

The add-ons are a tool that you can use for raiding. Not using them correctly doesn't mean you will succeed. Ever tried using a knife to eat soup? Exactly. You can eat soup without any utensils, but they were created to make things easier and more efficient.

Also, they're not "spoilers" for the fight. Just like learning the material before a test in class. Add-ons don't tell you exactly what ability to use every single second of the game and have big blasting signs with arrows telling you where and when to move.

[sarecho]

i'm sure there are but why reinvent the wheel? humans are on top of the foodchain because we take what others have done and improve, constantly, from one generation to the next

why reinvent the wheel?

[Ytlayol]

This is why I don't like raiding, I like to figure mechanics out for myself instead of reading up on guides or watching videos of how others kill a boss. Its the reason why I dislike the raid encounters in that anime called Sword Art Online, it has a mini fairy that acts like DBM. But there is another anime called Log Horizon in which the characters time the boss attacks themselves and figure everything out with experience.

[Bryntrollian]

Yes people do, because if they didn't the addons wouldn't exist.

[ddsad2212]

After playing Wildstar with basically no guides on boss (and generally vastly more complex fights and mechanics) I can safely say roughly the same amount of strategy within the guild is still required. If you read a guide all you will learn is the stuff you'd learn on your first two pulls honestly. Dealing with the mechanics is what really matters and what really makes the fight. I can remember thinking I was ready for Firefighter after watching a guide, jesus was I mistaken.

[Teebone]

I always have. I feel people who drown themselves in add-ons to 'play better' are missing the point. Until I lost a lot of my hearing a few years ago I could time any attack, dispell, gtfo of the fire and cooldown to audio cues that Blizzard conveintly put in every single boss encounter. Take Ultraxion, for example. A certain word he speaks when he's charging his AE of doom is exactly when to optimally hit your 'save my ass' button.

Using stock UI and my own skills I found the game a lot more rewarding. This comes from raiding for years in EQ before WoW where such mods would get a permaban and why I can't bring myself to call today's raiders 'skilled'.

[Nirurt]

I fake having addons by not standing in colors and killing adds.

[Alroxas]

How does raiding can feel like any sense of accomplishment when you use a dozen addons that take away any sort of situational awareness that you would need to have or when you already know exactly what to expect and do for every encounter without learning it on your own developing your own strategies?

The main problem here is that raids have gotten more complex since the days of classic wow. This original article over restokin highlights the simple fact that raid design has gotten more complex with increasing mechanics. Granted you have to look at these mechanics at the time the content was current since old MC (that is lv 60 MC mechanics) are trivial when you're several levels higher. However, looking at how MC LFR has turned out, we see that even the handful of mechanics in MC scaled up to lv 100 did present a lot of LFR groups with significant challenge.

Outside of a few guilds in Beta, do any guilds out there try to raid without using addons and without reading spoilers and watching videos of all the content before they try to raid during a new tier? Is raiding only about the end result and how fast you can get there and have nothing to do with the journey to get there?

I think the best analogy is this: you're driving at night from point A to point B on a curvy road filled with obstacles (i.e. pot-holes). You could try to drive with just ambient light (no addons, no previews) but you also have the option to turn on your head lights (i.e. addons) and also fire a super flare that would light up the entire road (i.e. videos) so you can see the entire road and it's obstacles. Which would you prefer?

[Vereesa]

There's one guild I know of that does this; MM of Turalyon EU. Manaflask did an interview with them a while back and it goes on to explain their ethics and views on raiding.

[Deleted]

Outside of a few guilds in Beta, do any guilds out there try to raid without using addons and without reading spoilers and watching videos of all the content before they try to raid during a new tier?

How does raiding can feel like any sense of accomplishment when you use a dozen addons that take away any sort of situational awareness that you would need to have or when you already know exactly what to expect and do for every encounter without learning it on your own developing your own strategies?

Is raiding only about the end result and how fast you can get there and have nothing to do with the journey to get there?

I know right?!

I taught myself how to drive all on my own. It took a little bit longer to get to grips with it without reading the instructions and I may have run over and killed handful of adults and children, perhaps some dogs too...but the sense of achievement I felt after mastering clutch control and driving safely in a straight line was fantastic. Because I knew I did it all by myself.
Don't even get me started on when I taught myself how to wipe my arse.

[Tziva]

Bosses all have tells for when abilities are going to go off, they say something, they do a different animation, and special lighting effect or color change, or something to that effect happens. You could use each one of the tells to do what you need to do. Is it the best way to do things? Not really. I mean some bosses are too big or areas they need to be tanked in have camera issues where it is hard to see them, a lot of healers are looking at player bars and wouldn't notice them. Timers lets you know when to expect those abilities to happen. All the information is there if you can pay attention to it.

I think you misunderstand. I know that, but that doesn't matter. Boss tells are almost always for when abilities are used, but they are many abilities that optimally to be preempted - either with a cooldown or with positioning. If you need to be collapsed when an ability goes off but spread otherwise, waiting for the tell might be too late for the raid to move in. Timers can also help you adjust strategy on the fly when the original strategy fails for whatever reason or, say, you're about to hit a berserk and might be able to save the attempt by doing something crazy you wouldn't otherwise try. The value of timers isn't knowing when something is happening, it's knowing when something is going to happen.

I'm not saying it's impossible to raid without boss mods. Beta raids do it. Top guilds do it when they're pushing content the addon authors haven't seen yet. Addon authors do it when they're making those timers for the rest of us. But overall, boss mods are a pretty valuable tool that the average raider should be running so they are not making things more difficult for themselves and their raid. A raid might be able to get by without timers, but it will make things harder than they need to be for basically no reason other than stubborness against the addon.

I highly disagree with the people who say that boss mods are a crutch. They're not a crutch, they're not cheating, they're just a useful tool to improve results, quality, efficiency. Boss mods are the level you use to hang that shelf; you can skip using it and just eyeball the thing, but your books might slide off the end a few times, and you might have to rehang it several times until you get it right. So why would you disregard it when the level is available and free? Does it make you better at hanging shelves because you eventually do it without a level? No, it kinda makes you worse.

[DeadmanWalking]

Blzz blues have noted that due to addons they have reduced reaction time to attacks during a raid, so using an addon doesn't exactly make it easy. In fact you are handicaping yourself if you don't use addons.

I always study the fights a week ahead of time and write up notes, but I am one of the few in my guild who do. At times I feel like I have to hold thier hands to get them to where I need them. I specifically joined another guild so I didnt have to do this as raid leader anymore, now its someone elses problem. A problem I don't intend to be since I study the fights.

[Sarodan]

Some bosses can't be done without being extremely lucky if you don't got an addon like DBM. That said, when I still played the game I hardly paid any attention to DBM except those that needed said addons.

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Where is the logic in that? Always try to be the best or become it...

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yeah so that would consider reading up on stuff and using addons no????
1% can't read up on tatics it was like that i ment it.

[thumbwarriordx]

I don't watch videos. I'll specifically avoid them. It's absolutely infuriating when I'm looking for information and the guides are videos exclusively.

The worst part is that I know all of the guide makers had scripts and could publish them. Only some of them do, and I really appreciate finding the forum post for a video guide and reading it instead of watching.

It's important to know the different spell effects and mechanics in a fight. Learning them as you go is a recipe for lots of failure, just like the gold proving grounds were for me went I went in cold with all of those helpful explanations muted.

You've got to know the rules before you can develop effective tactics and strategy. Maybe you're on beta and have to do it the hard way but if so, take notes and write a guide.

[Annarion]

From my experience, most raiders are clueless and rely on the raid leader to tell them where to stand.

Personally I don't look up strats, but read the dungeon journal in it's entirety (Not the coles notes version) and figure out what I need to be doing. DBM is there for the warning sounds to stop me from tunneling too much. Other than that, I don't really watch the bars or anything.

[Tharkkun]

This is why I don't like raiding, I like to figure mechanics out for myself instead of reading up on guides or watching videos of how others kill a boss. Its the reason why I dislike the raid encounters in that anime called Sword Art Online, it has a mini fairy that acts like DBM. But there is another anime called Log Horizon in which the characters time the boss attacks themselves and figure everything out with experience.

When you have a finite amount of time per week to raid and you rely on others to accomplish your goals it's selfish to ask others to wait for you to figure things out when you could be studying in advance. If raiding was solo your view would make perfect sense.

[Caliph]

i do but then again i'm not a raid leader, guild leader, and am guildless. I read the boss' ability sheet and run it through my head. after a couple of wipes i know how to better position, avoid, nuke, etc etc. to me add ons just get in the way. they make things quicker to grasp but aren't necessary.

this is strictly heroic (old normal) level and not mythic.