NO Addons please. There is another solution!

This. Though they've already said they're looking into and and want to allow customization.

I also forgot the ability to invite guildies from the guild page. Currently you need to add them as a friend then you can simply right click invite to group.

Also a guild bank would be very nice with all of the crewskills and mod swapping going on. Or at least a guild crewskill registrar.

Boss mechanics should and will evolve regardless from simple tank and spank enounters. You can't do years of simple mechanics and not expect people to get bored of it and by the same token if you throw too many mechanics in it becomes too difficult to manage it without some way of tracking things. I raided from original Molten Core through to Cataclysm as a raider and raid leader. You know what DBM does? It puts timer bars on your screen for X ability and yells at you when X bad ability is about to go off. You know what we did in MC before DBM was around? We had someone time out an ability (stopwatches were popular) and yell at you when it was about to go off. Do people not see the similarities? Removing tedium and an unneeded aggravation is ok. The best part is that we STILL (I'm speaking up until mid Cata, don't play much WoW anymore) call things out on vent even with DBM. Anyone that claims DBM does work for you is either misinformed or ignorant, it has never done such a thing (other addons did and were subsequently banned or broken by the API devs).

I'll go one further: Ulduar. I can probably count on one hand the number of people that don't admit to it being one of if not the best raids ever released mechanics and lore wise. Now how many people got One Light while it was content (before ToC)? Not many and yet DBM was in full force then, it certainly didn't let anyone just walk in with 25 people and clear it because they had it, certainly not, especially with hard modes. How many people got Bane of the Fallen King or Light of Dawn before 4.0 changes? And that was with the ICC buff! I'm sure that small percentage only got it because they were the only ones to run DBM, right? (No one cares about normal modes. Want a cookie?). On that note: I got my Herald of the Titans title I and have never taken it off, that took coordination and skill (argue this word somewhere else) and I think it was not only far harder to achieve that than anything I listed above but also FUN and in no way did DBM make it 'easier'.

Mechanics will always and have to evolve, DBM has done nothing that either a raid already calls out things for you or track them yourself in other ways, it just simplified that process.

Believe me though, I tried to think of a way that it makes things easier (simplifying/streamlining is a Quality of Life change NOT changing difficulty) but I can't. I'm very opposed to automation of any kind, I remember the original decursive, no no no. And despite the name Healbot is not a bot in the automation sense it's just a convenient and ironic name. (Note: I don't heal but I know this from talking to and leading healers in raids)

I want Damage/Death Meters, I want a threat meter/indicator, I need UI customization. I need to be able to evaluate my own and others performance. Not for an epeen, I don't care about that, I think it's childish. I want to find and remove the lazy and help others improve. I don't want someone dragging the rest of the group down because they don't know their own mechanics or gameplay, lots of people want to improve and feel they are contributing and I can do that without the "give 110% or ****" mentality.

Lastly, I should add that any one who uses meters as a tool to mock or berate others are just bad players with a bad attitude. It is not the fault of the tool it's a fault of the person using it with malicious intent. Ban/ignore them and move on.

I think you missed the biggest aspects of DBM. It allowed people to zone out and wait for a sound to hit an ability to save themselves/not stand in fire.

Because people now would get warnings blizzard had to up the oneshot abilities/make instant cast boss abilities. Every other ability dbm can warn your about even monitor the cooldowns on boss abilities. Those cooldowns aren't visible to players who don't have DBM. So as the large majority of people got DBM Blizz started designing abilities and in some cases randomizing/restricting what info the client recieved. A prime example of this is on the Warlord boss in cata. His big tank damage attack is anywhere from 20-27 second cooldown in attempt to fool DBM, Nef also had mechanics designed purposely to mess with DBM if you were the add tank you learned this fast. Take a look at all the mechanics Blizzard adds in that requires everyone in raid to switch targets and burst within a few seconds or taunt swaps for tanks, those are there because of DBM. It's a lame mechanic that was developed to combat a mod, not improve gameplay.

As a huge fan of DBM and I still say it isn't needed. DBM was designed as a crutch for players which then turned into a tool to push more DPS by focusing less. The crutch evolved along with the game until people forgot how to walk without it.

By keeping DBM like mods out they can balance the encounters much more dynamically and use more visual clues to show boss abilities. All in all I loved DBM in WOW but it made every boss mechanic feel dead because you never actually figure out anything. My favorite fight in Cata was the Warlord one with the big tank damage, since DBM had a incorrect spell id the cooldown didn't work so we had to work out the mechanics ourselves.

Yeah but before DBM, you just had a raid leader tell you what to do anyway. DBM simplified raiding, which I suppose made it easier for some. My guild is slightly above average and we have been together since AQ40. We've now moved over here, and have done all the normal content without addons with ease( not nightmares ).

However, the game feels VERY clunky right now, and PVP especially feels like I am playing the 2000 version of Halo for PC, with glitch lag stepping and horrid lag between button/spell execution. Doesn't really have to do with addons/additions needed to the game, but I think the overall combat system needs to be relooked before we start thinking about these others, minimal things.

Without reading 20 pages I agree wholeheartedly with this thread. I also agree the UI needs more customization (see Rift) which they said they are planning to implement.

A full out complete modding of the game will ultimately take the direction and focus of raiding out of the developers hands and will have to cater to the mods making things "too easy". Encounters as they are are already fairly simplistic aside from a few like SOA.

I'd prefer to react by paying attention to the encounter instead of having to hit a button within .5 seconds of hearing a gong noise. Without mods the devs can give a bit more leeway for reaction timings while still offering a competitive experience. Plus they'll have to fix the ability delay before super strict timings can be commonplace.

Don't like Addons?

Hurr Durr you're just bad.

Don't like 'em don't us 'em... also you're bad.

Anyone have a MORE COMPELLING argument?

So far I see more and better reasons for not having addons.

Yes to UI customization.

No to the rest of that stuff.

That happens when you look on things with a biased view.

fixt!

Healbots? NO
Deadly Boss Mode? NO
Gearscore? NO

Is fine to have someway to see the heal and the dps we do in total, but cmon just don't put addons that change the game.