Cataclysm

[Ingmar]

I just remembered we had a prot warrior as the last man standing on an Aran kill the 2nd or 3rd tiem we downed him.  The rest of us all exploded just after the elementals and he said "Fuck it, I'm trying."  No idea how the hell he lived through that last, what, 20% all on his own but he did and it was fantastic.

Aran was a fun fight as a prot warrior, you just sat on him doing your awesome protection dual wield dps and pummeling spells. It was a nice break from all the normal tanking on everything else.

[Fordel]

Doing Heigan with two or three people is one of life's simple pleasures. I was always Just That Angry to make them sit there and wait, I don't care if it takes ALL NIGHT because the only people left are the protection warrior and the holy paladin.

Kildorn used to make it his life's ambition to get this one dude through that boss. I don't think he ever managed it.  

I still think my favorite though, is the anti-fail from Bojuum, where everyone, including himself, just assumed he would fail horribly and it would probably be best if he just sat in a corner this fight... but he goes on to do it perfectly without any problem.

"I'm just as surprised as anyone!"

[Rokal]

Gruul I will grant you. That was in the first tier of TBC raiding and it was horribly tough pre-nerf. The last 2 bosses of AQ40 though? Yeah I'm ok with that being tough. I mean why not compare Sunwell stuff while we're at it?

The point right now is that there are so many razor's edge fights in the very first tier of raiding content. That's stupid. They allowed no transition between Wrath style to their new style. They just hit everyone in the face with it and hoped that God would sort out the dead.

There are plenty of examples of first tier fights with similar pass/fail mechanics where one person screwing up would wipe your raid.

Sorry, this is going to be long. Lots of examples coming:

Vanilla T1:
Onyxia - One person standing in the wrong place and getting feared into the whelp pit could wipe your raid.
Baron Geddon - One person with living bomb could wipe their group if they didn't run out of the clump. The easiet way to do this fight was to have everyone in one clump (besides melee/the tank) so that dispelling was easier. Nobody actually did this because, in most guilds, you couldn't rely on 39 other people to watch themselves for the debuff.

Vanilla T2: I'm only including Vanilla T2 since MC was such a simple raid zone, BWL was the first example of what all WoW raids after would be like
Vaelastrasz - One person with Burning Adrenaline not moving out of the raid would wipe you.
Chromaggus - Getting all 5 dragonflight afflictions on one person (maybe out of LoS of dispellers? maybe the dispeller was asleep) would most likely wipe you.
Nefarian - A priest who doesn't notice the priest call could easily kill a ton of the raid (including and especially the tanks) with corrupted healing, most likely resulting in a wipe.

TBC T1:
Gruul - As mentioned, pre-nerf it was pretty easy for one person to wipe the raid. After the nerf this was much less likely.
Magtheridon - If one person who was designated to use Manticron Cubes  didn't click at the right time, or was asleep, you would wipe. This was made even worse since you needed to rotate cube clickers because of the exhaustion debuff you got from using the cube.
Maiden of Virtue - Possible (but unlikely) to wipe the raid by chaining Holy Wrath
Illhoof - Breaking the chains was pass/fail. It wasn't on one person's shoulders, but more likely 4 people's shoulders. You couldn't carry your group, since you may very well have been the chain victim.
Aran - Already discussed. One person screwing up with Flame Wreath was usually a wipe. A single person could also trigger this multiple times, ensuring a wipe if they did it more than once.
Netherspite - One person crossing a beam that another player was already on would apply the exhaustion buff to both of you, after which there was a decent chance you'd wipe. Less common, but again one bad apple could cause the fight to fail regardless of how perfectly the rest of the raid was playing.
Nightbane - Standing in smoldering bones spawned more skels. If you didn't get out of the bones quick enough, you'd overwhelm the raid with skells and cause a wipe.
Malchezzar - If your tank did not move the boss correctly you could become trapped by infernals and wipe.

There are plenty examples in T2 and T3 for TBC which I haven't included since you specified T1 (not that I believe it really matters, current content is current content). The best example is probably Archimonde, who gave you a *ton* of opportunities to wipe your raid by making a mistake. Any player who died would cause the entire raid to take a very large amount of damage or get a harsh debuff. One death usually resulted in a second death due to the damage, and then you were surely screwed. You could die from not clicking your slowfall item, or from clicking it too early/late. You could stand in fire. You could path the fire into other players. You could get the huge DoT debuff and be too far from your dispeller, or your dispeller could be asleep/in the wrong place. This fight was the most obnoxious pass/fail fight they have ever done, and it easily eclipses every Cata fight.

Wrath T1: I didn't raid in Wrath, I only played for about a month after it came out. That said, from what I remember about Naxx 40, the following fights had similar pass/fail mechanics:
Anub - Easy fight, but dying to something stupid meant the rest of the raid had to deal with your corpse scarabs which could be a problem when combined with regular corpse scarabs from adds.
Maexxna - You could get webbed and die if your ranged web-breaker for that area of the room wasn't paying attention. I expect this wasn't much of a problem in Wrath, but you were again relying on one person to not screw up for the rest of the raid.
Loatheb - As I understand it this fight was changed a ton of Wrath. In Vanilla, one person screwing up the heal rotation would kill your tank.
Thaddius - Negative/positive charges, you could wipe the raid if you did not move to the correct side. I expect this effect was less dangerous in Wrath.
4 Horseman - Also changed a lot? This fight used to have strict tank requirements, and if a healer or tank did not follow the rotation correctly, you would most likely wipe. Moving out of voids was something plenty of people failed to do (including tanks), and missing people on meteor could make the damage overwhelming. Being out of group and targeted by meteor meant you were dead as well.
Sapph - Being out of position and getting hit by ice block meant that your half of the room might die to frost bomb.
Kel'Thuzad - Detonate Mana and Frost Block could doom the raid if one player wasn't spread out correctly, or stood too close to other players that were in correct positions.

This is nothing new. All previous T1 raid content had at least a few mechanics where one bad player could wipe the raid. If anything, Cata has less fights like this than T1 raids. There are a few abilities that will make things harder for the rest of the raid if you screw up, but nothing that will explicitly wipe the raid if a single person screws up. The exception to this appears to be some heroic fights, but that seems fair given that heroic fights are designed to be much harder than normal mode fights.

Cata content seems to be about multiple people doing their jobs well. 9 people doing average and one person doing awful doesn't mean that your raid will fail, but 5 people doing average and 4 people doing awful does. For example, with Magmaw it's not up to one person to handle adds, and if some adds get loose your raid doesn't instantly blow up, you just have some extra damage to deal with. If the two people doing rodeo don't time their chains well, Magmaw will start doing lots of raid damage, but the two people stay mounted on Magmaw and they can keep trying to get the chains timed right. Normal mode Cata raids have plenty of relatively forgiving raid mechanics, but everyone has to be playing well on average to succeed.

I could see your argument if Magmaw worms wiped the raid when they touched someone, or if Omnitron laser beam would instantly kill anyone besides the main target, etc., but there are no mechanics like that in any of the Cata normal mode fights.

[Samprimary]

Cata raid content has been about perfect for me. It's challenging enough, you have to learn your shit, but it's not going to stab you to death over one bad.

Cho'gall might, but in that situation it's obvious to everyone who the weak link is, since he's running around vomiting on allies and turning into a faceless one.

[Rokal]

To clarify, I quoted Paelos but he was actually talking about "razor thin" fights, not fights where one bad player prevented you from winning. My post was more of a reaction to:

Anything that is "deal with this or oneshot dead" = you've removed the ability for people to compensate for poor players. THAT is why people stopped playing Cata. Because I'm unwilling to play a game where I need to take a friend aside and say "sorry, but we want to have fun tonight. So can you go do something else?"

&

Shade of Aran, Safety Dance and a lot of similar mechanically difficult fights could be finished with only couple people left standing. I know, because I have done it multiple times. Beating encounter wasn't about everyone executing it 100%, it was more of "do some of you know mechanics and can do it" check. In Cata *everyone* has to be able to do it, and that where they went wrong. Most people can't or won't improve.

Saying that Cata is too hard because it has all these pass/fail mechanics is remembering the old raid content incorrectly, or after everyone had overgeared the content and you could survive some of the stupid stuff people did. I tried to show above that Cata actually has less of those pass/fail mechanics where one person could wipe you, and that old content had plenty of example of those types of mechanics.

As for the "razor thin" balance of Cata raiding, I think this is also remembering the old content incorrectly. Even Ragnaros back in MC was really hard until you overgeared it. Comparing normal mode Cata T1 to TBC T1, I would say TBC T1 was harder before the nerfs. Gruul was ridiculous, Magtheridon was tough, most of Kara was hard until people overgeared it and knew the fights like the back of the hand. Are you really going to tell me that Gruul, Prince Malchezzar, and Nightbane were easier pre-nerf than any of the normal Cata fights?

[Rendakor]

Most of your Naxx examples weren't accurate in the LK version. Thaddeus and KT were the two big ones. On Thadd one person standing in the wrong place with the charge would do a ton of AOE damage before instantly killing himself; lose 2-3 people this way and you were likely to hit the enrage. On KT bad things could happen if the melee (or anyone, really) got in range of the MT and frost-blocked him, or if the ranged failed to spread out correctly.

T1 Cata fights where one person can easily fuck the raid:
Magmaw: If the wrong person (aka a clueless idiot) jumps on his head by accident and doesn't know how to use the chain, your MT will be auto-killed and the raid will likely wipe to the AOE.
Omnitron: Failing to run from slimes, failing to run out of Acquiring Target, and DPSing a golem with it's shield up can all result in wipes.
Maloriak: Improper kicking of Release Aberrations will result in a wipe, either because too many or too few casts were kicked.
Valiona/Theralion: Casting without running out with Engulfing Magic can result in a wipe.
Ascendant Council: Failing to get away from the raid with Lightning Rod can easily kill people, usually causing you to fail the enrage.

[Paelos]

Rokal, I understand your point, but I think you are reaching on a few. The "run away or die" elements in Vanilla all had long timers before anything bad happened. You had to be completely oblivious not to notice. It wasn't that complicated. Even the morons in my group of 40 bads could handle them routinely. On Chromaggus and Nefarian you're REALLY reaching because that place instituted the need for mods that pointed out what was going on (Decursive, DBM, KTMThreat) and that got rid of the issues.

I forgot about the cube thing on Magtheridon, and that is a good example. I believe they nerfed the shit out of cubes and the debuff due to that being too complicated for people to manage.

Maiden, come on.  

[Rokal]

Yeah some of them were unlikely to wipe raids, but my point was that one person could wipe your raid if they screwed up. It would have to be the perfect storm of shitty positioning to wipe your raid on Maiden, but the mechanics made it possible to do so. Some of the examples were more realistic than others, but my point was that it was a common theme to older fighters.

T1 Cata fights where one person can easily fuck the raid:
Magmaw: If the wrong person (aka a clueless idiot) jumps on his head by accident and doesn't know how to use the chain, your MT will be auto-killed and the raid will likely wipe to the AOE.
Omnitron: Failing to run from slimes, failing to run out of Acquiring Target, and DPSing a golem with it's shield up can all result in wipes.
Maloriak: Improper kicking of Release Aberrations will result in a wipe, either because too many or too few casts were kicked.
Valiona/Theralion: Casting without running out with Engulfing Magic can result in a wipe.
Ascendant Council: Failing to get away from the raid with Lightning Rod can easily kill people, usually causing you to fail the enrage.

Magmaw: This is true, but similarly there were plenty of fights where a dps warrior taunting the boss at the wrong time would wipe your raid. It's just something that shouldn't happen. It's not someone 'not doing their task well', or being forced to do something perfect because everyone in the raid needs to do that or you fail. When my guild was learning this fight we had 4 people clicking on Magmaw just to make sure that there were always 2 people there to use the spikes.

Omnitron: Radius on poison bombs is pretty small, so usually if you are slow to react to a bomb targeting you, you'll only kill yourself. Maybe this is different on 25man where there is less room to run around though?

Maloriak: Partially true, but there is a lot of room to correct errors here. If you let Aberrations through that weren't supposed to spawn yet, your tank can handle them early or you can have a dps pull one of them out and kill the add pack individually (my guild has had to do this a few times). If you interrupt to many abberation casts, you can correct it after the green vial phase in a similar fashion. I expect a tank could probably kite a couple of these adds for the 'berserk' section at the end of the fight, if really needed. Point is: screwing up does not doom your raid, there is a lot of room to recover.

Valiona/Theralion: The damage from Englufing Magic isn't going to instantly kill your raid, but you are correct that one person can completely screw this fight for you. If they just stood there and didn't notice what they were doing, they would probably wipe you. This is probably the best example of a pass/fail from Cata, but it's generally considered a pretty easy fight.

Ascendant Council: This is a pretty good example. That said, there is a decent delay before lightning rod starts hitting people, and the room really encourages you to spread out. The people around you also see a large yellow arrow on your head, so even if you are braindead and stand next to everyone, those people can move and correct for you before it causes a problem. If blizzard was really designing this fight so that one bad player would wipe you, they'd have made it so that not having the correct debuff for earth/air ults did damage to the rest of the raid instead of just you.

[Malakili]

I forgot about the cube thing on Magtheridon, and that is a good example. I believe they nerfed the shit out of cubes and the debuff due to that being too complicated for people to manage.

Yeah, they did nerf that mechanic hard.  I think originally you needed all 25 people in the raid to be able to do it because the cooldown was such that you had to do 5 groups of five and then the first group started over.  It might have been 20 people though, honestly I don't remmeber. They they nerfed it down to only needing 2 cycles.  That was tough because if you died someone had to take your place, someone without the debuff, small margin for error.

Shit, even the trash for that place was fucking hard before they nerfed it.  AoE shadow bolting, fearing, healing each other.  Fuck that place.

[Ingmar]

I want to say now you can just have one person do the cube thing for the entire fight. Maybe 3?

[Paelos]

I think they removed debuffs completely after a while, so yeah.

[sinij]

Saying that Cata is too hard because it has all these pass/fail mechanics is remembering the old raid content incorrectly, or after everyone had overgeared the content and you could survive some of the stupid stuff people did. I tried to show above that Cata actually has less of those pass/fail mechanics where one person could wipe you, and that old content had plenty of example of those types of mechanics.

Well, then you tell me why casuals packed up and left. If content is mechanically just as hard as before, why all casuals, including many people that dabbed in hard modes in Wrath, picked up and left because it was "too hard"? Not all of them were bad players, but a lot of them made a call "I'd rather fail & quit with friends than succeed with strangers".

Re: Cubes - these were assigned to players that are not likely to fuck it up. Any "assigned" role that can be reasonably planned will exclude "idiot fail".

[Malakili]

Well, then you tell me why casuals packed up and left. If content is mechanically just as hard as before, why all casuals, including many people that dabbed in hard modes in Wrath, picked up and left because it was "too hard"? Not all of them were bad players, but a lot of them made a call "I'd rather fail & quit with friends than succeed with strangers".

Because WOTLK established that it was a viable play style, and Cata said it wasn't.  We can harp on BC and vanilla all we want (and I have to some extent), but I bet a huge population never even played those when they were relevant content.

[Rokal]

Honestly? I think a lot of people are just burnt out on the game, regardless of the content that was delivered. I couldn't stand playing the game anymore after Wrath came out, but I think a lot of that was because I had been playing the game heavily for over 4 years and the game had just gotten boring. At the time I told myself it was because the new content wasn't very good, but in retrospect that was only half of the story. I still wouldn't have liked Wrath even if all of the content was amazing, because I had simply been playing the same game for too damn long. I stopped playing for a good two years, and when I finally came back for Cata I started having fun again. Expansions usually bring huge changes to the game, so if you are unhappy with the game (in a broad sense), you hope that the expansion will change things you don't like or refresh the game for you. Of course, the expansion never manages to be the magical panacea you were hoping for, and WoW is still WoW. I think the people raging about the difficulty of the expansion are mostly just people who are burnt out and are looking for someone or something to blame for why they aren't enjoying WoW anymore. I think for most people, even if the content that was delivered was exactly what they wanted, they would still be looking at WoW and wondering "Why isn't this fun anymore?"

[Rendakor]

Because WOTLK established that it was a viable play style, and Cata said it wasn't.  We can harp on BC and vanilla all we want (and I have to some extent), but I bet a huge population never even played those when they were relevant content.

This describes me pretty well. I tried a raid or two in vanilla and didn't like it, so all I did was PVP. I quit shortly after hitting 70 in BC because I didn't care for the difficulty and don't like arenas. WotLK was the high point of the game for me; first from successfully joining PUG raids, then leading PUGs, then putting together my own raiding guild. By the end of ICC we had two steady raid teams: one was 8/12 H ICC 10, the other was just starting to work on HMs. We're now down to one raid team, and we frequently have to pug 1-2 members just to fill our 10m. Half of the people we DO have raiding are new recruits; a grand total of FIVE of us from the LK days are still playing.

[Kail]

Because WOTLK established that it was a viable play style, and Cata said it wasn't.  We can harp on BC and vanilla all we want (and I have to some extent), but I bet a huge population never even played those when they were relevant content.

That sounds pretty accurate to me.  I know I never did any raiding or many 5-mans before Wrath, when I joined a very casual guild that was raiding Naxx because it was so easy.  The guild dramaploded halfway through the expansion, but then the LFG system came out and made it even easier for me to get gear even without a guild.  Maybe BC was worse, maybe vanilla was worse, but this is the first expansion where things like the gear reset or the difficulty of heroics was a set back at all for me.

[Rokal]

Re: Cubes - these were assigned to players that are not likely to fuck it up. Any "assigned" role that can be reasonably planned will exclude "idiot fail".

Iirc, these were assigned to ~20 out of 25 people in the raid because of the exhaustion debuff. Sure, it was assigned, but it was assigned to almost the entire raid. Plenty of room for idiots. Keep in mind that if even one person didn't click their cube at the right time, it was a wipe. Everyone else in that 'group' of clickers would get the exhaustion debuff and be unable to click the cube again for a quick recovery, and Magtheridon would nuke your raid for a ton of damage. It was a much bigger pass/fail 'idiot' check than anything currently in Cata, and it was much less forgiving of mistakes. Most guilds didn't farm Magtheridon much because the fight was easy to fail until they nerfed it, which took quite a while.

[Sheepherder]

It's not like anyone really wanted to do the fight, the loot off of maggy was shit.

[Rokal]

It's not like anyone really wanted to do the fight, the loot off of maggy was shit.

Eh? He dropped the T4 chest token and had a couple other nice drops too. People definitely had loot incentive to kill him, it just wasn't enough.

[Malakili]

It's not like anyone really wanted to do the fight, the loot off of maggy was shit.

I think you needed it for TK attunement.

[Paelos]

It's not like anyone really wanted to do the fight, the loot off of maggy was shit.

I think you needed it for TK attunement.

Yes, that was at the heart of that retarded shrubbery maze.

[Rasix]

If you're making comparisons to TBC, you're fighting a losing battle.  TBC raiding was largely inaccessible for casuals outside of Kara (which was painful with bads) and if you had critical mass Gruul/Mags. The 25man stuff was HELL in a casual guild.  I have the scars.

Vanilla.  HAHAHA.  Yah, casuals didn't raid. 

[Malakili]

If you're making comparisons to TBC, you're fighting a losing battle.  TBC raiding was largely inaccessible for casuals outside of Kara (which was painful with bads) and if you had critical mass Gruul/Mags. The 25man stuff was HELL in a casual guild.  I have the scars.

Vanilla.  HAHAHA.  Yah, casuals didn't raid. 

I'm not really fighting a battle at all, I'm mostly just saying that this isn't some kind of unprecedented thing for WoW.  I'm in fact saying that is quite typical of WoW and that WOTLK was the exception, not the norm, but people are treating it as the norm.

[Paelos]

I don't think anyone is questioning that it's happened before. I think what we are questioning is the brick-wall method to which they've applied this change, and the fact that returning to an era where the game was less popular didn't exactly seem like a grand strategy.

[Lakov_Sanite]

I just don't understand why you go from record breaking subs to "let's roll the clock back three years!"

[kildorn]

Doing Heigan with two or three people is one of life's simple pleasures. I was always Just That Angry to make them sit there and wait, I don't care if it takes ALL NIGHT because the only people left are the protection warrior and the holy paladin.

Kildorn used to make it his life's ambition to get this one dude through that boss. I don't think he ever managed it.  

I got him to the last dance phase once. Just to PROVE that there was enough time between bursts that you could STOP AND HEAL. ><

edit: also, that fire bird troll dude was another "fuck it, we're going to beat this, and YOU ARE ALL GOING TO WATCH" things.

[Margalis]

I just don't understand why you go from record breaking subs to "let's roll the clock back three years!"

I think their idea was to make the game a "better" game. Someone here listed how these changed were objective improvements - took more skill, less "spammy", etc.

Kind of like saying that the Ville games suck since there isn't any real skill component to them or mastery to be had. Kind of true, but that's also kind of the appeal.

WOW has always been known as an "easy" game in every sense of the word, both in actual difficulty and fake pain-in-the-ass roadblocks. That's the appeal. It seems to me that the current devs looked at their Checkers and tried to turn it into Chess.

[Fordel]

Doing Heigan with two or three people is one of life's simple pleasures. I was always Just That Angry to make them sit there and wait, I don't care if it takes ALL NIGHT because the only people left are the protection warrior and the holy paladin.

Kildorn used to make it his life's ambition to get this one dude through that boss. I don't think he ever managed it.  

I got him to the last dance phase once. Just to PROVE that there was enough time between bursts that you could STOP AND HEAL. ><

edit: also, that fire bird troll dude was another "fuck it, we're going to beat this, and YOU ARE ALL GOING TO WATCH" things.

Or you just heal as a Druid. 

[amiable]

I know from my group of friends there is a lot of anger and frustration.  I leveled up earlier then everyone else and have only hung around to help my RL friends get through heroics.  So far it has been a total nightmare.  To be honest some of them aren't that great (key-board turners and such), but the general consesus is that heroics are a stab in the dick.  The weird thing is that most everyone can run heroics individually and do fine, but when we come together as a group it all falls apart.  I never realized how much of  a difference that random group buff makes.  It doesn't help that our tank is a bit undergeared, which makes running heroics an exercise in frustration.

Also, if you are going to make it a requirement for your playerbase to download third part mods (DBM, GTFO, decursive) to be successful in your five man content, you are a poor designer, there is nothing else to say.

[Merusk]

I'm not really fighting a battle at all, I'm mostly just saying that this isn't some kind of unprecedented thing for WoW.  I'm in fact saying that is quite typical of WoW and that WOTLK was the exception, not the norm, but people are treating it as the norm.

No, people are treating it as "wtf you had this nice, accessible game that was making you tons of money and you decided... nahhhh.  We'll piss of the majority and instead cater to the top 1-3%."

Now their initial logic is sound, in that the top 1-3% has a lot of pull and they were getting bored.  BUT that pull is ONLY with your typical MMO-Gamers.  You know, the guys who jump from game to game and actually do only make-up about 1mil total players.

WoW, on the other hand, grew so large it's become a cultural phenom and drew-in other platform gamers and those only casually interested in gaming.  They were the ones who spread it by word of mouth so you had all those people for whom it was their first MMO.

I think Blizzard is finding out that they made up a lot more of the player base than they anticipated, and that they don't give a fuck that Elitist Jerks, Premo or whomever are having fun in normal raiding and had fun in heroics.  These players are frustrated, angry, confused and generally not having a good time. Social ties and nostalgia are probably keeping them in because it's their first game, but they're drifting away steadily.   

[SurfD]

Also, if you are going to make it a requirement for your playerbase to download third part mods (DBM, GTFO, decursive) to be successful in your five man content, you are a poor designer, there is nothing else to say.

I can't, off the top of my head, think of a single Heroic dungeon where Decursive or DBM would even come close to being "required" to complete said Heroic.  Unless the player in question is REALLY REALLY bad at standing in stuff, or hasnt figured out how to properly configure a basic party frame addon / make a mouseover dispell macro, there really shouldn't be a need for that kind of thing (with the possible exception of healers, since sometimes knowing when a boss is targeting you for a nasty attck is nice when you have to spend most of your time with the Tank / DPS targeted).

Raids, where you are dealing with 10 / 25 people at a time, with bosses with lots of complex abilities you need timers / split second decurses for, sure, but 5 man Heroics? That's stretching it a bit.

[Minvaren]

When I was tanking heroics in LK, I used DBM just to remind me which boss was which between all of the different dungeons - especially as I wasn't running each and every one daily.

[amiable]

Also, if you are going to make it a requirement for your playerbase to download third part mods (DBM, GTFO, decursive) to be successful in your five man content, you are a poor designer, there is nothing else to say.

I can't, off the top of my head, think of a single Heroic dungeon where Decursive or DBM would even come close to being "required" to complete said Heroic.  Unless the player in question is REALLY REALLY bad at standing in stuff, or hasnt figured out how to properly configure a basic party frame addon / make a mouseover dispell macro, there really shouldn't be a need for that kind of thing (with the possible exception of healers, since sometimes knowing when a boss is targeting you for a nasty attck is nice when you have to spend most of your time with the Tank / DPS targeted).

Raids, where you are dealing with 10 / 25 people at a time, with bosses with lots of complex abilities you need timers / split second decurses for, sure, but 5 man Heroics? That's stretching it a bit.

I'm sorry, but bullshit.   Sure, if you are walking into heroics dripping in full raid gear you can power through without difficulty, or if your Jesus McAwesome multitasker who can read the chat log while running around doing full dps/healing and avoiding standing in fire it is possible.  But if you coming in in a premade with average folks who just are hitting the gear level you need mods for quite a few fights.  A few examples:

The first fight dragon boss in grim batol, knowing who is going to get charged will save your dps and or healers life.  
Knowing when a big ability you need to interrupt is up is necessary for countless fights.
Sometimes the graphic display of where an AOE boss ability lands doesn't exactly synch up with the radius.  Unless you are paying atention to your health bar at all times you may not know to reposition yourself without something like GTFO.
A big warning about the shadow gate is necessary for the last boss in Grim batal, because the f-ing shadow gate looks so graphically similar to the same bosses AOE damage ability.
Cleansing static cling on the last boss of pinnacle vortex is a nightmare without decursive, because the debuff doesn't show up very well on the default ui.

I am a healer, and let me tell you, I literally could not do my job without these mods.  The ability of our group to do heroics went from impossible to "difficult" once we got everyone to install these mods, they make a huge difference.  And that shows how shitty the design of this game is, we never needed that for heroic dungeons in LOTRO (and my group ran them all in that game, with minimal difficulty).  The folks we game with have been playing MMO's for years, including some WoW vanilla raiders.  5 man content should not be this difficult.

[Malakili]

I am a healer, and let me tell you, I literally could not do my job without these mods.  

Sounds like a you problem. 

I will grant you that the default UI isn't ideal for healers, but literally not able to do your job is a lot different from makes your job easier.

[Lakov_Sanite]

I am a healer, and let me tell you, I literally could not do my job without these mods.  

Sounds like a you problem. 

I will grant you that the default UI isn't ideal for healers, but literally not able to do your job is a lot different from makes your job easier.