importance of addons

[keymone]

hi guys,

i'm struggling to convince some guildmates that addons really are important to be successfull in wow raids

so i decided to ask a simple question here: does any of paragon players play without addons at all?

and what do you think about importance of addons overall? what addons are absolutely musthave for tanks/healers/dps?

thanks in advance!

[Fireslave]

I know im not a paragon member so to you this reply might meen jack all, but a lot o fplayers tend to use DBM or bigwigs as a safety net, as well as omen. Bertender and UI alerting addons are mainly useful because

1) theyre coustomisable,
2) some of them look cool or can be scanned to look so, and
3) The right set of addons can increase visability on screen, allowing you to perhaps be less on edge about abilities and dps more confidently, or ... yes im bad at explaining but you get the drift :) Hell i went through about 4 UIs (Coustom and DL'd) until i found the right one. Might change again still who knows.

[keymone]

thanks for reply but to be clear on my intention with this topic - i'm not looking for replies about fancy nice looking of interface with addons

i'm looking for opinions about importance of addons(and which addons) for improving your game performance

[Kruf]

so i decided to ask a simple question here: does any of paragon players play without addons at all?

Far as I know, no.

and what do you think about importance of addons overall? what addons are absolutely musthave for tanks/healers/dps?

The Blizzard standard UI simply doesn't provide information in a clear and concise format. While you can play with it, you'll have to waste part of your concentration on fighting the UI rather than the bosses. Thus, addons that bring the information out in a more easily readable way are beneficial.

Stuff everyone needs:

Some bossmod addon with proper warnings and that can be customized to only show stuff important to you. BigWigs, DBM, DXE or whatever tickles your fancy - we mostly use BigWigs for progress since that's the one I find easiest to add our own custom stuff into.

Raidframes that can show debuffs, aggro warnings and such. Grid is a common choice.

Buff/debuff/cooldown timers. NeedToKnow is a good basic choice.

[xenophics]

I think Iiris runs with the least modified UI from our guild and still performs excellent. In my opinion the only "must have" high end raiding addon for all classes/roles is some kind of boss mod. I don't believe we would have been able to get Lich King heroic down even nearly that fast without using Bigwigs, which had the defile/shadowtrap yell and cooldown timers for boss abilities. Of course some encounters are easily doable without one, but Lich King certainly isn't.

In addition there are some addons that are nearly a must depending on the class. Playing my shadow priest without an addon to track my dot timers would be a nightmare. I believe grid/similar addon which can be modified to show debuffs etc is nearly a must for healers.

Kruf managed to write an answer a bit before me but I'm posting this still.