Are people relying too much on addons?

[Eletharin]

I agree completely, but that's another thread. On topic, your dog is probably a lot better than most of the people in these forums.

Off topic: I used to tank SWP and Illidan mod-less as well.

lol ... touché

[Reg]

Relying on addons way too much. I hate when people say they failed and did something wrong because DBM didn't warn them properly or because one of the addons wasn't working properly.

[Hunterwep]

Mods are like an elevator, yes taking an elevator is more ez... But the stairs keep you fit!

[Pkite]

My guild uses them. I don't, and I'm the MT. I'm just saying that they aren't necessary if you're an exceptional player.

MT really doesn't need to use them because you can take the hits. For example when you fight PP, avr marks where the goo will land, it's easier for the healer and dps to dodge it because they don't have to look where the goo is headed. It's nice to have your guild use this if they are casuals.

[Copain]

DBM however is the biggest necessity in the world. WHoever doesnt have it nowadays can't efficiently raid. A guild on my server raided "naked" without any addons or reading strats and their progress was always fun to watch.

I can't agree with that. I don't use it and back when Ulduar was the raid to do, I had to cleanse fusion punch off myself (I'm a tank) because my healer's addon that pointed out debuffs for him wouldn't catch it before the debuff hit me and I died.

There's several other cases where I've outperformed people by simply looking at what's going on.

Just saying my situation. Not saying anything about people who use an Addon are bad or anything before you say that.

[Deviante]

Personally I like addons that help players to customize their UI visually more into their liking. Also blizzards default UI isn't very good for raid healing, debuff clearing etc. What I dont like are DMB etc. kind of addons and I havent used them since SWP...

[axio]

WoW is a platform with programs (aka addons) to expand it. Do you only use the default installation of Windows and not install anything else? I seriously doubt it. Microsoft includes apps like Wordpad, Paint, etc., but they are still replaced by something better. Addons basically take the UI element of WoW off of Blizz's shoulders and at the same time allows users to customize their UI so that they are comfortable playing the game.

The answer is 100% yes

You take away
gearscore/elitistgroup
recount
Dbm/bigwigs
healbot/clique/grid

As well as any other mod that has any of the same functions as those above and 95% of the wow population would come to a dead halt in progression.

So what, you want healers to heal by randomly selecting people and hoping they need a heal? because healbot/clique/grid are nothing but raid frames, the same raid frames that are built into the game, but prettier. Actually, the fact that you include recount kinda makes me believe you aren't that great or are butthurt over someone calling your meters out in the past. The only above addons that are questionable are the boss mods, but since Blizz actually designs the encounters around the addons it doesn't really mean anything.

Yet people still think its Blizzard that is making PvE easier.. :

They are... In vanilla, abilities were somewhat random. In BC/Wotlk, everything is on a set timer. Add back the randomness and boss mods become much less useful. Ofc, boss mods don't tell you how to play. You may know something is about to happen, but you still have to react appropriately. Even with AVR, you still have to know what it means.


I really don't even see a problem with GearScore either, because from what I have seen, the GS requirements are pretty fair. No, it doesn't tell you skill, but someone with a 5.8k gs has a much higher chance of being good than someone with a 4k gs. If for some reason the leader of the group is a moron and relies solely on gearscore then you know the group would probably be fail anyway, so it's a win win.

As for Recount, your a fool if you say damage meters should be removed. They have pretty much always existed to an extent, and are an excellent tool to measure raid performance given the viewer isn't a moron. Which comes back to what I said about GS, if they don't know how to read Recount then it's time to gtfo anyway. I don't know of a single guild that doesn't use Recount or some form of combat log parsing... and the ones against it are generally the ones lowest on the meters claiming they had to do X, but are still low compared to players of the same class in other guilds doing the same job with the same gear.

[Eletharin]

I think the customizability of the WoW UI is a key feature, and the "make life easier" addons are nice too. As noted above, ultimately the addons can't actually automate gameplay thanks to strict API rules.

What I take issue with (although I don't have a good answer for this dilemma) is how the proliferation of very good raiding addons has led to an arms race of encounter complexity. The harder fights in ICC were obviously designed to be somewhat difficult even with the addons available at the time (AVR wasn't available at that time...). As the addons get better and better at multiplying the skills of the player, the encounters have to keep getting increasingly more complex in order to make them non-trivial. There's already a large gulf between players with and without a good raiding addon setup, and it will only get wider (and harder to cross, for people who aren't really into tracking the latest addons and getting an ideal custom setup going for their spec and raid comp).

Which is why blizzard works non-stop to implement dumbed down crappy versions of addons into their default UI. Threat meters, Cast monitors, Equipment managers, Calendar invites ... I would expect boss encounters in the future to include some AOE ground pulse effects for almost everything leaving AVR as nothing more then a glorified range check (which is all it is now, but it can also flag who has some of the sneaky debuffs).

On another track of thought, why can't keeping a clean, functional, up to date UI be part of what makes a good raider? Setting up power auras to take full advantage of all its features is way more complex then most boss encounters lol.

[Blahblah512]

Some people in this thread are grossly exaggerating.

Addons are useful. Any good raider would survive without DBM, unless they've developed absolutely no raid awareness and the like. Basically what you're saying then is that "Bad players are bad without addons."

Duh. They're bad.

And there's a bit of scrub mentality going on here too. "I must abide my internal code of honor that says addons are cheating."
Like someone in Street Fighter looking to ban continuous throw setups because it's cheap.

[jr06]

...the proliferation of very good raiding addons has led to an arms race of encounter complexity.

Encounters seem to be increasing in complexity dramatically compared to older encounters. That being said, Blizzard has basically disabled addons that made raiding too easy (thinking of the original Decursive off the top of my head).

When they give a boss 5 or 6 abilities on timers and a couple of those will wipe you if you don't have incredibly split second timing, it appears to me that they design the encounters with the intent that you will have certain addons available to deal with certain things.

[tibben]

Know what else would stop progression .. unplug your mouse. The game is designed to be played with a keyboard, and you could do everything ... it would just be really hard and backwards.

Actually...Our main tank (pally) did not have a mouse until about a month ago. At which point we had already gotten 6/12 into Heroic 25 ICC. Although, now that he has a mouse he brags about how awesome it is just about every raid :P I would not suggest it and I can't even begin to imagine a healer without a mouse, but it is possible for a dps or tank to go without a mouse.

[Uruk]

Yup players nowadays rely WAY too much on addons, they even have an addon for what move to use next, and still they go all like "QQ blizz makes mah raids too easy blizz fails QQ"

i cant understand why someone would use so many addons that the addons plays wow for them...
but hey thats the quality of players nowadays... (not saying that people that use addons cant be good tough, Just if they cant play witout em)

[Endus]

It's hilarious. Throw you in a raid without your crutches and you're useless. It's very disappointing to see the majority of people raid with this garbage. It's not how the game was meant to be played. It's cheating. Like GameShark for WoW.

That's basically the exact opposite of what I said.

Addons for WoW are "cheating" in the same sense that driving a car to work instead of walking is. The game is, in fact, designed with the assumption that many players WILL use addons, and the engine they run on is part of the default game. They're quality of life improvements. They're often such important concepts, like threat meters, that Blizzard eventually builds that functionality into the default game.

I also use a 4-button mouse. Is that "cheating"? The default keybinds assume only a 2-button mouse. That must mean that using anything else means I'm a dirty cheater.

[styvorama]

Take away grid and hover cast macros(or clique) and good luck raiding heroics.

[JackalopeSpam]

You really need to consider what each addon is actually doing. Also, a lot of adons have been adapted into the Blizzard Standard Issue UI. People will still use the original because they liked the look or it gave more information than blizzard's.

Take for example some trivial addons like Auctioneer, Skillet, and Atlas Loot. They all just change the way non-combat pieces of the UI work or add some extra information to the player to avoid web research or personal tracking. Recount and Gearscore addons as well, they just provide information on other players that could be tracked, if you really wanted to spend that much time.

Other addons have been introduced to the game like Questhelper, ItemRack, and Omen. Some of the blizzard implementations aren't quite as good, but Blizzard has added them in. DoT/HoT timers as well have been implemented, and your debuffs didn't even used to stand out.

Now consider some of the more raid required addons.

Deadly Boss Mods: If you haven't noticed, Blizzard has been adding in more and more boss emotes to help designate certain actions performed by the boss. It isn't nearly as good as DMB or the instant marking, but it's getting better with each content that comes out.

Grid: Blizzard has standard issue raid frames, they just don't show debuff's and the like as easily nor are they quite as customizable.

Clique: You can write your own mouse over cast macros for this if you know how. The addon just allows for those not as educated in macros to do it easily.

AVR: The standard AVR isn't so much of a problem. It is in essence a way to mark up the room to show players the game plan. You could already do this through a lot of time and effort using flares.

AVR Encounters: This one might be pushing it a bit. However, a lot of what it does is show a range check on different abilities. That's something that is really lacking in game. Boss moves are not standardized in how far away from each other you need to be. Some moves require a 6 yard range others an 11 yard range. There isn't a single way for a player to really know distance unless you sit there with an appropriately ranged spell and try to find it. Other help is when certain parts of the room are going to 'explode' or cause you damage for standing in it. It's not always clear how far you need to be away from these. Take for example shock vortex (not empowered) from Blood Princes, it's good to know where the edge of that is and not always easy to find. Another example is the Ooze explosion from Rotface, you're supposed to run out of where it's going to hit the ground. It's near impossible to find out exactly where to be without those circles on the ground. Otherwise you make sure no one was away from the center, and then run to the way just to be safe. Consider it on HardMode where ranged has to spread out.

As long as Addons are just providing information it's not a terrible thing to have and blizzard has implemented some of these to the game anyways. Now once the addon starts animating the character (casting spells or moving) that gets to be a too much.

[Jovufyzrtcbiyfyih]

I barely use addons in WoW.

My current addons are:
X-Perl. I don't like the look of the original frames, so I had them replaced. Same functionality as the original.
Livestock. I have 100+ mounts and pets. Livestock helps me control them.
Recount. So I can see how the raid's doing damage-wise.
SpamSentry. Stops Goldseller-spam.
TipTac. Moves the tooltip away from the fixed bottom right corner, to my mouse-pointer.

And that's it. No DBM, no AVR, no raid addons.

[sentry0]

Take away grid and hover cast macros(or clique) and good luck raiding heroics.

This x1000.

I personally think that hover cast should be part of the default game for healers. Although I would say that it's entirely possible to raid using the default raid frames...I personally wouldn't do it because grid is so compact and has useful info on the player frames that it's very nice to have running.

[JabJack]

who cares some people want to use them and others don't if you don't like them then don't use them /thread

[Calon]

One fateful raid night...

"Blizzard is making WoW too easy!"
"Yeah, damn, this game sucks now!"
"Lets disable our addons, turn off the ICC buff, and then say the game sucks because of too many people wearing epics!!"
*Cheers of approval fill Ventrilo*

Hmm, I'm going to prove this to the world, once and for all! Disable Deadly Boss Mods, Omen, AVR, yeah, that's good enough.
Okie dokie, logging back into the game... Doopydoopydo loading screen. Time for some (normal) ICC25.


The next day, on the World of Warcraft Technical forums...
"Dear Blizzard,
Please fix your game. Last night the boss encounters were seemingly all stuck in Hardmode causing the lengths and difficulty to be much greater than previous weeks. I, personally, believe it is a result of too many scrubs / casuals being geared in purples. Please fix this or I will quit.

--Dkxxarthasxxdk
<Elitest Nerd Ragers>"

[Novamh]

i personally feel the game would be a lot more fun and a hell of a lot more challenging without addons such as dbm and other ones that tell you what to do, others that customize ur UI i see as being perfectly fine but would be really nice to see everyone having to play without dbm etc..