Dps*

I'll make the joke... Posting a comment is too much to wrap my brain around.

Ugh. I hate comments like this.

Have you ever USED an addon like this? It doesn't push the button for you. It merely tells you things in a more attention-grabbing manner than the default Blizz interface does. To be honest, there's a lot that the default buff/debuff tracking doesn't do right.

I use PowerAuras, which seems to be similar to this addon to track things on my Resto Shaman. Without it, there would be no way to see if the tank/my focus has my Earth Shield buff on him other than either targeting him and looking through the mountains of buffs he probably has to find the tiny little ES icon. Forget about looking at remaining charges. So PowerAuras gives me a nice big glowy box when it's not there. Same for Water Shield. Same for my weapon enchant. Same for certain other buffs.

If your definition of "playing the game" is looking through the 20-something buff/debuff icons you generally have on you in any 25-man raid to find a particular one, then yes. This addon plays the game for you. If your definition of "playing the game" involves getting past UI limitations and actually playing your class instead of looking for pictures in the corner of your screen, then no. It doesn't.

Yes its a shame when people use available information to make decisions.

It's not about having it play for you. It's about dealing with information overload. I play better when I can easily see that this buff or that debuff is active without having to sift through 20 icons next to my minimap. This mod will only benefit those players who already know their class well and just want to play better.

I respectfully disagree, Cynea and Lokradu. Addons like these, and yes I have used them, remove an important skillset from the player base. Situational awareness is already low, and only goes down further with this type of automation. You could train a monkey to dps with these addons. "Press 5 when you see red, Mr Peaches."

Personally, I prefer a game where most of the skill is in responding to boss and class mechanics to decide what abilities to use when. Blizzard clearly wants a large part of playing your class to be about keeping the right buffs up on yourself, the right debuffs up on your enemy, and reacting appropriately to procs. Playing a complicated version of "Where's Waldo: UI edition" is not my idea of fun.

Really? What is that skillset exactly? The ability to sift through thirty debuffs in a split second? The ability to distinguish a 10x10 pixel from two dozen other 10x10 pixels that are constantly changing/moving as buffs and debuffs drop off and are applied? I'm sorry...but that doesn't count as a skillset to me...that's an annoyance. PowerAuras and the like let me, and others ignore that annoying task and focus on the skillsets that actually matter: healing, DPSing, or tanking the raid.

For me the game isn't about how difficult I can make it, it's about killing raid bosses together with my guildies, it's about having a fun time with them. Peering at little pictures to try to figure out of ES is down isn't really part of that for me.

I didn't see anything against Cyanea's arguments. Looking for some or other buff or debuff on this or that frame is not situational awareness, it is poor UI design. Cyanea was talking about healing, in this part default UI is simply unusable.

DPS can get away with the default UI, but try telling raiding affliction warlock or shadow priest to get rid of Event Horizon or whatever addon they (without doubt) using. They'll laugh at you.

Maybe you are one of those people who didn't want mounts on level 20. The game became too easy, didn't it? And in Cataclysm UI will be rebuilt — this is bad too, because we just started to like breaking our eyes with the default silent player frames and combet text right in the middle.