Originally Posted by
xenok
I would argue that anyone who has raided knows they have 'only so much attention' to give to the numerous things that are going on in raid between moving, switching targets, your rotation, voices in vent/mumble, etc.
This is where good addons can help tremendously. If you can make it easier on yourself to know when to move, do your rotation, etc, you will find that you have more attention to give to other things like staying alive, increasing dps, etc.
You ought to consider that you have 2 ways to pay attention to things in-game -- visual attention and auditory attention (thanks Oatz for the concept). With a couple simple addons, you could easily shift some of your visual attention load to your auditory attention which I suspect is under-utilized for most people. Are you using your ears right now to help with your rotation and stay alive? GTFO for example is a great tool that will make it VERY clear if you are in something bad. There are times when you may be standing on the edge of something bad and you aren't sure if you are in it or not. GTFO will alert you faster than any other means possible and help train you along the way by making it clear what to look out for.
Another thing to consider is audio ques for your rotation. I know a lot of people hate this idea, but I really like it. I have a soft 'ping' that alerts me every time a Mindblast is available since its a spell you really don't want to ever delay and it can randomly proc with DI. I also have an audio alert setup if I reach a 2cap on my surge of darkness procs, since I can't store more than 2 procs at a time.
Another obvious thing is DBM, which I think most people who raid already have. BUT -- have you actually gone into the options and enlarged the bars and positioned them on your screen so that they aren't in the way but impossible to miss? Do it now if you haven't already!
With a few properly setup addons you can really help increase your overall awareness and effectiveness in raid.