So, as is widely known, patch 4.1 dropped yesterday. Hooray for awesome boss fights, new loot, and super-fast stealth!
Oh, and all of your addons probably broke. And we’re not talking “oh the functionality here is giving me an error” broken, we’re talking catastrophic failure — with FPS plummeting as soon as you engage combat. What’s an enterprising raiding rogue to do? Triage out your custom UI elements, and hope for the best.
As I’ve been discussing over at Adrenaline Rushing, I’m a sucker for improving my performance with a sleek, focused UI based on where I’m already looking. Basically, if I can mod it, I try to do just that. Here’s a brief overview of what my UI is like generally:
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Pretty cool, right? I’ve got my timers, custom unit frames, effective timers … the works. Managing cooldowns and timers is much easier with a customized setup, and that gives me more time to react, plan ahead, and get the laser out of the raid.
Except for last night. Last night, this is how my UI looked when I got down to the three or four addons which actually worked:
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
At this point, I think I’ve got Bartender, BigWigs, and Gnosis Cast-Bar working. As the raid talked over Mumble, I slowly learned the entire guild was working with a similar, jury-rigged setup in which to down bosses. And down bosses we did. It was a standard raid night, for the most part, and we cleared out the farm content in BoT.
Which really brings out the true reason for this post — you can raid without addons. Just remember a three key points:
Be confident in your ability
You hear it all the time: “Addons play the game for you” or “Addon X makes this rotation too easy.” Essentially the addon enhances your skills. Sure, some can help cover up mistakes, but since AVR is broken, nothing is automatic anymore.
Bottom line, if you don’t know your rotation, or what is happening during an encounter, the addons will only amplify your suck. To overcome a lack of confidence, all you have to do is practice. Was my rotation optimal on Halfus last night? Of course not, because tracking CPs was rather difficult since I haven’t been looking to that corner since I started playing.
But, I adapted to the situation and because I was confident that I could pump out enough DPS to kill the boss.
Play for more survivability if you can afford it
Throw more Feints out if you can spare the GCD, and try to keep Recup up if you know it’s a raid-damage phase. Your healers might not be able to get that clutch spell off without a bit of practice, and since dead rogues do no DPS, you have to be ready to take care of yourself. This is pretty self-explanatory, and should be part of your standard raiding philosophy, but it’s doubly important without the benefit of all your addons.
And finally, we come to the big finale!
Wipe, wipe, wipe
Yup, you’re probably going to wipe. It’s bound to happen even with all the UI elements working, so without your familiar addon setup staring back at you, small mistakes can turn in to bigger ones, which can lead to inevitable wipes.
Just get ready to head back in there, and keep at it. The bosses will go down.
And hopefully, all your addons come back … sooner, rather than later.
