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

[Nopkplease]

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?

[Renx]

I'm sure there's certain individuals out there, but when you got 9-29 other people the chances of a guild doing so outside of what you listed is pretty slim. The general mindset is "We could be saving time by knowing in advance how to deal with this boss" Which is the case the majority of the time. There may be some room to adapt and change your strat from what the Video or written guide said, but that's honestly as far as I've seen it go outside of PTR testing or early Heroic raiding when there wasn't a whole lot of info.

About your last point though. Just because you watched a video or read a guide doesn't mean you suddenly have a 100% win rate. You still need to execute said strat properly or maybe have to change it up like I stated above.

[Tziva]

The people who use raiding addons use them to expand awareness, not take it away. If they destroyed situational awareness, then no one would use them.

There are too many boss abilities that are timers/cooldowns, don't have a default in-game display, and/or need to be preempted to justify the entire raid doing away with things like boss mods. Until Blizzard implements a better system for that, raids are always going to use them.

I am sure there are plenty of guilds out there that don't require addons or advance strategy planning. It's just rare that a guild with a more serious approach to progression would forgo available tools, since it can hinder you for no real reason. Nor do I think those things necessarily take away from the experience or raiding or mean you don't "learn" a boss. Even people who know what they're getting into still need to learn to execute the mechanics and still may need to adjust strategy to their own raid, and it's still way different to read something (or even see it on video) and experience it yourself.

[Tenjen]

going in what out the research and info is a lesson both in frustration and futility.

not all mechanics are self-evident or intuitive enough to learn from a wipe or mid-way during a fight. Not all mechanics are self-evident or intuitive enough to keep up with during a fight.

not to mention, when something involves a great deal of effort by many people together and takes many hours, it is smarter to go into something with a plan and a level of preparation. Not waste everyones time with nothing to show for it.

the joy is from the "doing", which is an entirely different animal from the "thinking" involved in just researching and planning. Execution is where the kicks come from.

"i love it when a plan comes together"

preparation and planning is the journey. you don't take the journey without proper planning and supplies. unless you want to end up dead, frustrated and/joyless.

Most guilds go in with the suggested plan but then adapt and change it to suit their needs (as their setup and abilities are seperate from the guides out there)

[WskyDK]

There's been an "ability creep" for a long time now. If you look at Garrosh (http://www.wowhead.com/npc=71865/gar...ream#abilities) he has 13 non-duplicated abilities. Sure not everyone has to know every aspect of a fight (they should though) there's borderline too many, for just that fight. Hell, 5 man bosses have as many abilities as Vanilla bosses.

TL;DR There's too much shit to worry about in raids these days. An addon to help remind/alert you to them isn't bad.

[Stormspark]

Um, addons like DBM do not teach you mechanics. They give you timers. Timers don't tell you ANYTHING if you don't know what they're for.

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There's been an "ability creep" for a long time now. If you look at Garrosh (http://www.wowhead.com/npc=71865/gar...ream#abilities) he has 13 non-duplicated abilities. Sure not everyone has to know every aspect of a fight (they should though) there's borderline too many, for just that fight. Hell, 5 man bosses have as many abilities as Vanilla bosses.

TL;DR There's too much shit to worry about in raids these days. An addon to help remind/alert you to them isn't bad.

5-man bosses now generally have 3x as many abilities as vanilla raid bosses did. Heroics often have 4x.

[Tziva]

going in what out the research and info is a lesson both in frustration and futility.

not all mechanics are self-evident or intuitive enough to learn from a wipe or mid-way during a fight. Not all mechanics are self-evident or intuitive enough to keep up with during a fight.

not to mention, when something involves a great deal of effort by many people together and takes many hours, it is smarter to go into something with a plan and a level of preparation. Not waste everyones time with nothing to show for it.

the joy is from the "doing", which is an entirely different animal from the "thinking" involved in just researching and planning. Execution is where the kicks come from.

"i love it when a plan comes together"

preparation and planning is the journey. you don't take the journey without proper planning and supplies. unless you want to end up dead, frustrated and/joyless.

Most guilds go in with the suggested plan but then adapt and change it to suit their needs (as their setup and abilities are seperate from the guides out there)

That is a far better explanation than I was able to enunciate.

[PBitt]

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?

That would be called not being prepared. It's fine-ish in a casual guild not doing the harder content, but anyone even remotely serious about raiding should come prepared. There are still plenty of people that just mooch off of everyone else's preparation in some of the more serious raiding guilds and it's not fair to those who put in time (and it's really not that much) to at least get the basic idea going in.

Also, no, it doesn't make it auto-win. There are many factors going in, and most people (even some of those in the actual raid) are completely oblivious in regards to the coordination and execution that is needed to down the harder bosses. Group make-up and skill of players is a factor, which includes proper utility usage, which most groups have to figure out for themselves.

[Insomlol]

Prior planning prevents piss poor performance.

[CausalXXLinkXx]

beta/ptr. /thread

[Val the Moofia Boss]

I've never used raid addons; I just read the dungeon manual figure it out myself through trial and error. I don't go to WoWhead to read the strategy guide because I feel it detracts from the learning experience and discovery.

[Lord Havik]

Raiding without researching the fights, or using a boss mod like bigwigs or DBM is like taking a college level trigonometry test without studying or bringing a calculator. I guess you could possibly do fine, but why handicap yourself intentionally by going in blind, foregoing useful tools or both? Seems rather quixotic.

[GutsAP]

How does having timers detract from anything? Also, why do only the worst players talk about addons being a crutch?

[Sarodan]

If you aren't in the top 1% progression guilds in the world don't try to be them....

[Gandrake]

Raiding without researching the fights, or using a boss mod like bigwigs or DBM is like taking a college level trigonometry test without studying or bringing a calculator.

Except that you have significantly more chances to kill a boss than you do to pass an important test without studying.

Some people like to put a puzzle together by picking out the pieces of the frame and putting them together, and some people like glancing back at the box every 5 seconds and putting their puzzle together.

[Bigbazz]

As I started raiding SOO late and didn't progress through wipe + learn I didn't actually know half the mechanics in there. I'd killed the bosses many many times without issue while not having a clue about why you did certain things, why X mechanic was important or why we had to kill something else first. Before stepping into Heroic (now mythic) I did watch some guide videos but really I find it hard to soak it all in without actually doing it.

The only way to really learn a fight in my eyes is to wipe and learn on it and none of it has anything to do with requiring addons, they just help you keep track of things to form better decisions. But ultimately you rarely need to know every aspect of a fight and most people don't.


With that said, I already know working kill tactics to about 50% of the bosses in WOD as I did them on the Beta, and we had no DBM or GTFO or internet guides to do it then, and most of the groups were pugs of various levels of raider. Dungeon Journal takes away the guess work for the most part.

[Deleted]

Except that you have significantly more chances to kill a boss than you do to pass an important test without studying.

No? How do you even manage to be so wrong? If you don't review and just attend classes, even at uni level, you're better prepared and more likely to pass an exam than to kill a boss you're seeing for the first time if you don't research the fight. You're going to get spanked hard regardless of how high numbers can your group pull.

Inb4 "I haven't seen the test beforehand either". No, but you attended classes that cover the subject, no?

[Deleted]

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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If you aren't in the top 1% progression guilds in the world don't try to be them....

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

[Sliske]

Depends on the boss. Some bosses you just learn after 2 wipes. Jin'rokh, for example. Other bosses like Siegecrafter it would take me about 4-5 wipes to get MY strats down ie, as a fury warrior, this is how I do the belt, this is what I do when im off the belt, etc.

Most of the time I don't run with a DBM addon unless we're getting close to a kill, the guilds i'm in are usually fairly casual (world 400-600) so half of the raid is myself and a few others waiting for the majority to learn basic mechanics like move out of fire

[Adhemar]

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.

I have to say, 80-90% of the time, DBM is just annoying me with noise. But the remaining 10-20% is crucial to not causing unnecessary wipes, which is important for any guild with limited raid hours. This isn't a single-player game, and I can't keep 19 people on the hook indefinitely because I didn't pay enough attention to one mechanic or lost track of the timing of one ability. They have lives to get back to, and no one enjoys the frustration of dying endlessly to one boss.