NO Addons please. There is another solution!

Thread is moving too fast and no one reading posts - but will add my .02 regardless. As OP indicates There is another solution - I haven't seen one.

What I do know is:

1. We have gear score in this game already. Every item has an ilevel associated with it. And if you read any guides it will say for end level operations you need to be over an ilevel of 120 or you will hit enrage timer. I can inspect today and determine ilevel - it will go back to old days of inspection before raid or a tool / armory of some sort will be used to make that inspection easier.

2. We have tight enrage timers - it has been written many places by guilds downing operations that the bosses are either very over tuned or under tuned. Meters lets us understand what to fix - without meters you may spend 4 hours wiping at 30% and have no idea why. Good leaders understand players who are on interrupt duty or kite duty won't put out the raw numbers but are necessary and killing the boss ultimately ends up being somewhat math based - do you need to subtract a healer, do you move assignments so toon x is bursting down an add - who do you keep on boss. Meters let us avoid the frustration curve.

3. I love to heal, it is very satisfying, but UI customization that at least lets me see buffs / debuffs is kind of critical - did your dot expire, do you need to cure, is the player able to be shielded. That information easily viewed and accessible makes healing a joy rather then a keystroke to try and shield - nope didnt work - try and shield again later and waste a GCD. I can live without mouseover, and never used healbot (grid user) but playing a toon well means processing the information quickly and reacting to it.

Well, i cant hold myself from contributing.

I support:
1. UI customization, like changing size/colour/position (check Guild Wars instead of WoW, they did a good job).
2. Statistics window after operations/flashpoints (really handy, to see how you yourself performed).
3. Some sort of threat meter (this one is really optional, because its more fun and skill to estimate it myself).

All other things are unneсesary to improve your skills and to beat operations/flashpoints. Some people voiced a good opinion - we did it without addons in WoW, we could do it without them here, we could do it anywhere if we use brains (i mean one in head, not spinal cord).

And i think all those things (customization and statistics) must come from bioware itself, because its only natural to allow players some comfort with UI.

And all above is IMHO, as always.

It still involves strategy and quick thinking. Add-ons, however, have the potential to make you a better tactician because you can analyze the information you need most in a more consistent and convenient manner. All actions in the game that you perform become executive decisions that determine if you live or die. These programs can improve your survivability by letting you make smarter decisions by analyzing information in a faster way.

I've healed 40-man instances before; I'd punch a man if they demanded me to use the standard interface. I've done it, but I almost ripped my hair out with all that work. I'm not saying the 16-man heroic flashpoints will be as intense, but I can tell you right now that the grid interface provided will not do the job.

Despite having all these add-ons, it doesn't give you the precision of a computer program; I guarantee you it'll still be challenging on certain flashpoints. And if it isn't enough, then you can turn it off. But like I said, I don't turn down free help that makes me a better player.

That doesn't mean WoW didn't do some things right. I personally feel add-ons were a positive influence to the game. WoW's regular UI was garbage. I'm not saying SWTOR's inferface is garbage but it's pretty damn close. Why do I feel like I'm playing 800x600? Why can't the map provide me more than one layer of information? Add-ons can fix my problem, but not everybody wants that problem fixed. All I'm asking is at least ALLOW the players to make choices to their interface.

If you think that terrible stat sheet at the end of a war zone is the answer then really its not, just go on the sorcerer forums and have a look at all the kids bragging about doing 500k damage in a war zone, with their AoE hybrid builds.

It's easy looking at the numbers in bold, but player and guilds who want to improve will want detailed analysis of damages done, healing done, which this game lacks.

ATM the stat sheet is far to vague, and will be used for the wrong reasons,

Bragging in chat (again refer to the sticky in the sorcerer forums)
Justifying a reason to kick a player from group
Determining if a player is good or not

I'm not saying add recount, but if they plan on staying with the Stat sheet, it need to be alot more detailed so a player, especially newer players can ;
Monitor their own DPS
Check whether current speccs, gear, rotation etc is making a significant difference
Also checking DPS uptime during an encounter, DoT uptime, Overhealing, not to mention procc's, interrupts, decursing etc.

I would suggest something along the lines of World of Logs, where guilds can go back and look at what was going wrong etc and analyse data.

...I really didn't expect to see this subject line, but then again, last night I saw someone raging over the fact that companions can be customized, so clearly people will complain about anything.

I like my ability bars to be rounded instead of square, I like having a chatlog saver so I can afk for a few minutes and be able to catch up upon returning, I like being able to customize how debuffs appear on my raid frames, and yes, I like being able to see who in my raid is not using the Lightwell, who's taking more damage than they should from standing in things, and what the tank just died of -- was it something I could have prevented, was it not?

I don't expect Bioware to cater to every one of my whims -- there are bigger issues they should probably be focusing their time on -- but the nice thing about the modder community is that there's almost always someone out there who wants the same thing you do, and fortunately, some of them have the technical know-how to make it work!

If you're the type who just wants a good old-fashioned bare-bones UI, that's fine, too. It's not as though we can't co-exist. I know good players who play with add-ons; I know good players who play without add-ons. I know bad players who play with a mountain of add-ons, and I know bad players who stay with vanilla UI. In the end, who cares? It's the results that count.

Honestly, people are not going to care if you (generic you) don't use a mod that tells you not to stand in stuff IF YOU DON'T STAND IN STUFF. They're probably not going to kick you from a raid for pulling average DPS, though they might if you're pulling abysmally low DPS, or DPS that's not consistent with your gear level. It means that you COULD be doing better -- significantly better -- and you're not doing so, either because you just don't care, or because you don't know how.

For those who just don't care, um, yeah, don't be surprised if serious raiders don't want to raid with you, because obviously they do care. There's nothing wrong with playing with other people who don't care, either; content will just be more difficult to clear.

For those who want to do better but don't know how, isn't it preferable to know that something's wrong so you can fix it?

(Of course, there are also groups of jerks who will kick at the drop of a hat, but why would YOU want to raid with THEM, anyway? :/)

I just don't see how the answer to 'DPS meters will empower elitest jerks who think everything is judged by big numbers!' is 'Let's take away DPS meters entirely so nobody knows what exactly is going wrong, and we can all spend nights wiping in futility!' or even 'Let's take away all add-ons entirely so everyone has to play with the same UI, hurrah!' To me, it seems rather like cutting off your nose to spite your face.

now there is a bold statement.

I believe pro addon are experienced player, that want more depth to the game than just pretty shiny spell and nice animation.

but then again, people tend tu put all addon in the same bag. I am a defender of meter type addon, like recount, or combat log parsing.


that add on isn't bad, it simply state the fact, the simple truth (given that there are not technical limitation like, alternate dimension, distance too long, bug...)

it's how player decide to use it that can make a volatile situation in raid. People can be ***, i give you that, but they will be *** with or without recount.

another thing: there is nothing wrong in pointing other people mistake. If your dps is too low or you're not avoiding aoe damage you shoud, you need to know, how else can you improve otherwise?

I just don't want this game to become all about the addons and the "optimal build". WoW became that game. If you didn't have the 3-5 "required" addons and the perfect build with the perfect rotation then you were a noob. Especially DPS meters. If you had one bad day in a raid, unless it was a guild raid and they knew you, you were blacklisted and never invited again. A DPS meter doesn't tell people (or the portion that does is never looked at) that your DPS was 2k lower than the other mage/rogue/hunter etc. because you actually moved out of the bad **** and required 35% less healing then the next higher DPS. This game is fun. Lets not make it another job like WoW became where if you didn't do everything perfect you were shunned by all but your friends. Certain UI changes need to be made by Bioware, like target of target window and some kind of threat/agro indicator. However DPS meters, healbot type addons and deadly boss mods clones are not only not needed, they are not wanted by most players (elitist ***-hats excluded).

^ This.

Um, yes, it does. And people do look at things like Deaths, Damage Taken, Healing Taken, Dispels, Interrupts, etc. Maybe you're not playing with the right people?

I suppose, by your logic, I must be an elitest ******, because I like Grid, Recount and DBM. When doing progression raiding, my Recount generally defaults to Deaths. When pugging instances, I check Dispels and Interrupts to get an idea of which people in my group I can trust to not tunnel vision, which people I'd like to run with again.

After a wipe, it's fantastic that I can link the Death or Damage Taken report to show, if necessary, that people died to stuff they shouldn't have instead of having everything blamed on me as a healer because, hey, people are dead! Clearly I wasn't doing my job! Because without a Recount-type mod, that's what's going to happen. (I mean, sometimes it's me screwing up. But it's nice to be able to show when it isn't!)

Of course, that's just me. I'm sure there are plenty of people who just look at Damage Done, and laugh at everyone underneath them. But, you know, depriving them of a DPS meter will not alter their personalities. If their group wipes to an enrage timer and they can't tell who's pulling lower DPS, they'll just spread their abuse to the entire group. You can see plenty of that in Battlegrounds, where people don't know who to blame for a loss, so they just blame everybody.

Removing damage meters -- let alone all mods -- is not going to make the game a happier place.

MAYBE a good raid leader looked at those items mentioned. Maybe. Usually it was only the healers that looked at those stats, and if they said anything they were told to quit whining about someone standing in fire and heal like they are supposed to. "Just heal through it". How many time have you heard that? Never ran into a good raid leader in a pug.

A lack of DPS meters is a very good thing. It keeps the rage filled children from being able to point fingers and if they rage anyways they get on that whole groups /ignore list. Soon they are no longer able to play with 1/2 the server pop and hopefully learn to calm down.

I don't want to remove damage meters -- and mods won't be necessary if BW/EA incorporate a few changes of their own -- I don't want them added because they will make the game a sadder place.