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  1. #1

    Does Deadly Boss Mods reduce the joy of raiding?

    A comment I see very often in forums and ingame chats "just do what DBM tells you". or similar statements, got me wondering.

    I have (twice now)Raidleaded MV10 normal full clears, without DBM and appart from the add spawntimer on Elgelon (assigned a DPS to keep an eye on that) I honestly didnt notice a difference in my playstyle nor any raidleading issues from not having DBM. Infact, I had a more "fun" time without DBM than with....

    Now, the problem is, DBM is kinda mandatory for certain abilities, because you kinda need to plan ahead for them (like adds on Elgelon) but MOST of the bosses abilities so far in this exp can be handled just as well, if not better, by simply being aware.

    My question is : Does DBM "reduce" the "joy" of raiding (Like using training wheels on your bike) or is it just me being a bit S/M and deliberately making things harder for myself to feel more "elite"?

  2. #2
    Personally I think its a lot more fun without DBM, and I seem to "forget" updating it every patch or so ... Sadly. To me its a bit like "being handheld" through raids, and that you don't really learn the bossfights etc. Maybe thats just me though

  3. #3
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    In a sense it is cheating using a program like that!
    Whats the fun in that? It is mandatory for alot of guilds i found that rather pathetic. They dont wanna risk the wipe i guess

  4. #4
    Pit Lord
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    Well it's like back in the day of Megaman/super mario brothers/final fantasy vii/viii, there were guide's out there that you could buy but I never saw the point in that as it does remove the fun for those type of games, but in an MMO where you are working together as a team and where everyone needs to know what to do at a given point I think DBM then becomes quite mandatory. It doesn't tell you what to do as such, just give's you a heads-up so you don't get over-run by abilities.

    Some encounter's would probably be impossible without a DBM type of add-on in my opinion.

  5. #5
    Herald of the Titans Racthoh's Avatar
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    you can win without timers but it won't be as effective. (slower)

  6. #6
    I am Murloc!
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    Quote Originally Posted by maaci View Post
    In a sense it is cheating using a program like that!
    Whats the fun in that? It is mandatory for alot of guilds i found that rather pathetic. They dont wanna risk the wipe i guess
    That's some big words. Cheating. I guess Blizzard wants us cheating, since they added their own boss warnings to default UI. They are nowhere near as detailed as DBM/BW, but they exist.

    But hey, it's "cheating". It trivializes the fight and there's no way Blizzard designs bosses around their usage. There are no bosses that use more than one ability. There are no abilities that have cooldowns, instead being used immediately. Hell, even knowing that boss is about to go berserk in 15 seconds so your healers help out with dps is outright cheating. Oh, and 'pathetic', can't forget about that one.

    You are one of those people who believe DBM is some magical tool that plays the game for you and automatically deals with every problem, right? If not, you sound like one.

    E: Funny how even top guilds have various timers in their kill movies. I guess they're the same "pathetic cheaters" as the rest of us.

  7. #7
    Quote Originally Posted by Narveid View Post
    Personally I think its a lot more fun without DBM, and I seem to "forget" updating it every patch or so ... Sadly. To me its a bit like "being handheld" through raids, and that you don't really learn the bossfights etc. Maybe thats just me though
    Unless the group knows what they are doing you wont just get by on DBM alone, you still very much need to learn the fight tactics to beat it.
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  8. #8
    The need for DBM is far lower than it used to be. Before, boss timers/abilities were kind of ambiguous. You had no real way of knowing what the boss was doing by simply looking at it.

    However, Blizzard have gotten A LOT better at communicating via the aesthetics/UI. Take Will of the Emperor, for example: the energy bar tells you when Devastating Combo will be cast, and then the boss's animations show you exactly where to move. If Blizzard were designing that boss fight back in, say, TBC, then it would have no energy bar and the boss would just attack randomly. You would need DBM in that situation to tell you where and when to move, whereas now you can do just fine with the default UI.

    Honestly, while I have DBM installed, I barely ever pay much attention to it. I could probably do away with it entirely, since the game also throws out raid warnings when bad stuff is happening.

  9. #9
    Deleted
    Quote Originally Posted by maaci View Post
    In a sense it is cheating using a program like that!
    Whats the fun in that? It is mandatory for alot of guilds i found that rather pathetic. They dont wanna risk the wipe i guess
    You just called every single serious player in world of warcraft pathetic...

    We play a game, we use addons, dbm gives us information that helps us in the game, and you call us pathetic?

  10. #10
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    Was only an issue in DS to me, where I would have less than 1 fps with dbm, and 12-20 without. Yes, Ultraxion won a lot, but other than that I did ok-ish. I do prefer with dbm when it doesn't lagg me out though.

  11. #11
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    used to use it, then went to Rift when there were no addons, learnt to not rely on them, came back to wow (playing both) and uninstalled all my crutches. I use a couple fo UI addons as WoW's standard UI is just horrific, but apart from that its not needed.

  12. #12
    It sure does for me, which is why I haven't been using any boss mods since LK. By being aware I've still managed to be the first to learn new encounters in my raid group and also perform the best on boss fights.

  13. #13
    Go do Spirit Kings heroic without any kind of warning for the 98 abilities going on all over the fucking raid


    Have fun!

  14. #14
    Quote Originally Posted by Chyper View Post
    A comment I see very often in forums and ingame chats "just do what DBM tells you". or similar statements, got me wondering.

    I have (twice now)Raidleaded MV10 normal full clears, without DBM and appart from the add spawntimer on Elgelon (assigned a DPS to keep an eye on that) I honestly didnt notice a difference in my playstyle nor any raidleading issues from not having DBM. Infact, I had a more "fun" time without DBM than with....

    Now, the problem is, DBM is kinda mandatory for certain abilities, because you kinda need to plan ahead for them (like adds on Elgelon) but MOST of the bosses abilities so far in this exp can be handled just as well, if not better, by simply being aware.

    My question is : Does DBM "reduce" the "joy" of raiding (Like using training wheels on your bike) or is it just me being a bit S/M and deliberately making things harder for myself to feel more "elite"?
    As a raid leader there is one moment where I really get a rage on if people don't have a boss mod (Note that I generally speak about heroic raiding now). When you're targeted by an ability that you and others need to move from, but there's no clear ground effect displaying it and only you actually get a warning from the boss mod before it happens, the boss mod uses both /say and warns other boss mods that danger is around. I don't know if you all did Lich King (Heroic as normal was much more forgiving on defiles), but handling Defile and Shadow Traps without a boss mod in a 25 man raid would be extremely hard if not impossible for most guilds. Not that you as a targeted person would nessecarily fail, but people around you might due to the ground being covered with effects or a defile target moving too slow or in the wrong direction without a say announce. Remember that it took one player out of 25 being slow and the entire raid would wipe!

    As a priest I play Discipline on several encounters in 25 man raids at the moment, and timers for major abilities will always help me perform better due to the use of Spirit Shell. I could perform equally well in the long run without them, but it would take longer for me to get used to each encounter and thus it would put more pressure on my raid members to make up for my learning phase. I see it as a no brainer to use a boss mod when you have 9 or 24 other players relying on you to do the best job possible and also warn them about targeted abilities as clearly as possible.
    Last edited by Arainie; 2012-11-12 at 11:42 AM.

  15. #15
    Pandaren Monk
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    Having timers is handy, and I do find that wow should have these by default.
    Alot of things like interrupts and standing in stuff does make it less fun to me. I tend to disable these warnings.

  16. #16
    Yeah, I Also need mods that tell me what to do in other games like CoD and warcraft. <sarcasm. And no, i didnt need mods for heroic DW or any raid pre that. thats just me. some people just need to let the game play for them. =O <sarcasm /facepalm.

  17. #17
    Before they existed in Vanilla( or they werent as powerful) we had one person in the raid, who did nothing else than watch the clock and announce abilities. Bosses do their moves in certain time intervalls and its necessary in heroic to plan ahead for the next: OMG phase. So you cant remove the timers, somebody would just have to take over that task and start watching clocks the whole time.
    What I somehow can agree with is that this mods became to powerful. You can literally oneshot new Bosses on Normal if your DBM is up 2 date and you just do what it tells you.

  18. #18
    Deleted
    i remember reading a blue post ones that addons like DBM and bigwigs have changed the ways the designed raids.
    knowing that players were using these anyway they started making things more complex.
    personally i have no issues believing thats true if you just simply watch at what old vanilla and BC raid encounters did compared too the ones we got nowadays.

  19. #19
    Quote Originally Posted by Faldric View Post
    So you cant remove the timers, somebody would just have to take over that task and start watching clocks the whole time..
    That’s actually exactly what happened in the MoP beta before addons like DBM worked in the beta. I were following a bunch of streams that did raidtesting and people where using /timer and had the timer running and calling out on vent before some special abilities.

  20. #20
    More importantly, that's what we did in EQ when we needed timers. This is what we did in Vanilla before we had Bigwigs. Fights are BETTER designed not to need them, but they're definitely not all equal (spirit kings you would NOT want to do for isntance).

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